Brianne Lasconia scored a career-high 15 points for SPU and Suzanna Ohlsen added 13. Betsy Kingma had 11 points, including consecutive treys inside the four-minute mark that staved off Cougar rally attempts.
 
APU was led by the 29 points of Kelly Hardeman. Teammates Katie Powell and Sendy Valles each chipped in 11 points.
 
SPU overcame a deep deficit to claim a four-point halftime lead.
 
Benson scored her team's first six points en route to an 18-point first-half performance. She hit 8 of 10 attempts from the field before intermission.
 
Maggie Dumphy scored on a put-back layin to put the hosts ahead 25-12 nearly 10 minutes into the contest. SPU tallied the next nine points, capped by three consecutive baskets by Benson.
 
"The biggest thing is we got aggressive and we were able to go into a full-court press. That changed the game," Heisey explained. "The other thing is we gave up eight offensive rebounds in the first eight minutes of the half and we only gave up one the rest of the half.

"When we got aggressive with defense and rebounding it changed the momentum of the game."
 
Trailing 31-27, the Falcons got seven points from Lasconia to fuel an 11-point run that provided a 38-31 advantage.
 
Powell hit a 3-pointer on the Cougars final possession to forge the 38-34 halftime margin in favor of the visitors.
 
SPU scored the first nine points of the second half, capped by six from Benson, to stretch the lead to 47-34.
 
The Cougars twice drew within five points, but were turned away by treys from Kingma with 3:39 and 2:50 left to play.
 
A 3-pointer by Hardeman with 39 seconds remaining trimmed the deficit to 78-74, but the Falcons converted five of six free throws inside the final 36 seconds to seal the win.
 
The SPU women don't play again until Dec. 5 when they open Great Northwest Athletic Conference play with an 8 p.m. Pacific Time game at Alaska Fairbanks.
 
Heisey feels good about where her Falcons stand with an unblemished record at this point in the season.
 
"We put ourselves in a really good position because we have five in-region wins and four of those wins have been on the road and two were won a last-second shot.
 
"I'm proud for a lot of reasons. No. 1 we lost Aubree Callen (to an injury) this week and she's our leader and probably our best all-around player. For our team to respond in a way where we were able to go on the road and win with adversity against two good teams, I'm proud of the way we came together."