SAN FRANCISCO – Dominican women's basketball rode a relentless defense to pull away for a 64-50 victory Wednesday night over Academy of Art at Kezar Pavilion.

Taylor Linzie had a monster game for the Penguins (16-9, 10-4 PacWest) with a double-double of 15 points and 19 rebounds. Alaiyah San Juan added 14 points, five rebounds and four assists in another well-rounded performance. Alba Rovira and Maddie Morrow led the Urban Knights  (10-11, 3-10 PacWest) with nine points each, but Dominican forced 16 turnovers while committing only seven to hold the ART U offense at bay.

The game began in an offensive battle of runs as ART U scored the first four points  before Dominican reeled of a 7-0 run with Mikayla Amoroso knocking down a 3-pointer to take the lead. Harper Felch answered with a 3-pointer on the other end to tie the game for the Urban Knights to halt the momentum. Keira Mitchell then ended a 6-0 run for the Urban Knights with a layup to take the 13-9 lead with 4:35 remaining. The Penguins answered by scoring the next six points with San Juan connecting behind the arc to retake a 15-13 lead one minute later. Dominican maintained a small lead for much of the final three minutes as Linzie sank a couple of shots from the charity stripe to give it the 22-20 lead heading to the second.

Kaylyn Buchanon-Lamb started the next period by threading a ball between two defenders to Linzie for an easy layup and Abby Cooper added a floating jumper to push the lead to six with 7:52 remaining. ART U stemmed the tide and clawed its way back within a single point on multiple occasions, but Adia Walker provided the spark after the media timeout to pull away before the half. Cooper found Walker for a layup to start the run and Walker connected on two more jumpers cutting to the hoop to send the Penguins into the half leading 36-29.

San Juan buried a 3-pointer from the left corner to extend the Penguins lead to double-digits early in the second half. Dominican continued to frustrate the Urban Knights with its defense as Cooper contorted for an acrobatic layup from the baseline to push the lead to 45-31 with 6:36 remaining in the third. San Juan drove to the basket for the layup for the final bucket of what was a 20-2 run that spanned 12 minute of game time. Emilia Dougherty broke ART U out of its offensive doldrums with a desperation 3-pointer to beat the shot clock and the Urban Knights rode a 7-0 run to end the quarter to close the gap to 50-38 heading to the final period.

Dominican once again had the first significant run in the fourth quarter as good ball movement led to several easy shots. San Juan drove the ball up the court and found Adia Walker trailing the play and Walker nailed a shot from the top of the arc to push the lead to 21 points with six minutes remaining in the game. That was more of a lead than the Penguins would need as they cruised to the victory.

Dominican will return home Saturday to face Biola at 1 p.m. PST at the Conlan Center.