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TAMPA, Fla.  ? The University of South Florida women's basketball team won its third straight game with a hard fought 66-58 victory over Saint Peter's today at the Sun Dome.

Jessica Lawson led the Bulls (5-2) with a career night as she netted 25 points and 14 rebounds. It was her third career double-double, dating back to her playing days at California, and her second at USF.

Shantia Grace and ChiChi Okpaleke also tallied double figures with 17 and 15 points respectively.

“We definitely played a lot different then we did against Stetson and FIU being down four at (at the half) home,” said USF head coach Jose Fernandez. “We held them to 29 points in the first half and I thought we did a decent job defensively, holding them in the 20's in the first half. But our field goal percentage (9-27, 33.3 percent) and three-point percentage (2-12, 16.7 percent) was atrocious in the first half.”

The Bulls found themselves in a dogfight and realized early on that a victory would not be easy to come by.

The two teams would go back-and-forth for the first 10 minutes of the game before the Peahens (5-2) made their first real run. USF led 9-8 with 12:42 left in the first half before Saint Peter's would go on a 9-0 run to take a 17-9 lead on a Marcenia Bellamy lay-up with 8:54 left in the first stanza. Jazmine Sepulveda would finally end the USF drought with a three-pointer to pull her team to five points with 8:01 left in the first half.

The Bulls, however would put together its own run ? a 13-3 stretch - to get back into the game when Okpaleke scored two of her five points during the run on a lay-up with 4:13 remaining before the intermission.

The Peahens would not get flustered during the final four-plus minutes as they would use a 9-2 run to take a 29-25 lead into the locker room at the break.

Both teams came out after halftime with neither seeming to want to take control. Saint Peter's led the majority of the way in the second half, however never extended its lead to more than three points ? on two occasions ? for the first 8:30 of the final half. After Bellamy gave the Peahens a one-point edge (42-41) Grace would give the Bulls their final lead of the contest with a three pointer with 11:15 left.

USF would stretch the lead to eight on a lay-up by Grace with 1:48 left and then a game-high 10 (66-56) with 36 second left in the contest.

The Bulls would ice the game by holding Saint Peter's without a field goal for the final 2:07 of the game.

“We knew that we had to do certain things in the second half to get things going,” said Fernandez. “We had to keep getting the ball inside to Jessica Lawson. We ran some high ball screens and went high and low with Jessica and ChiChi Okpaleke and let them go to work inside. We also only had five turnovers in the second half after having 10 in the first and they only had two offensive rebounds in the second half.”

Statistically the two teams were pretty much dead even. USF won the battle in the paint, outscoring Saint Peter's 34-28, in points off turnovers outscoring the Peahens 17-15 and the two evened out with 17 second chance points apiece. However, the Bulls bench considerably outscored the Saint Peter's reserves 17-3 en route to the victory.

Sepulveda added seven points in the win and ? although she went scoreless ? Gianna Messina made the most of her first career start with career best's in assists with nine and rebounds with eight in 31 minutes.

USF will get a few days off before getting back to game competition on Wednesday, Nov. 5 at 7 p.m. against North Florida in the Sun Dome.