WINCHESTER, Va. - No. 4 Shenandoah University avoided becoming the first upset of the 2006 USA South Conference women's basketball tournament by holding on for a 66-62 victory over fifth-seeded Methodist University Tuesday night.

The Hornets (17-8) advance to the semi-finals with the victory. They will play top-seeded Ferrum, an 81-50 winner over NC Wesleyan Tuesday night, on Friday at 2:00. This game will be played at Christopher Newport University's Freeman Center.

The four-point, quarterfinal round victory over Methodist (13-13) came just three days after SU had downed the Lady Monarchs by 25 points in the season finale.

For much of the first half, it looked as if Shenandoah would be able to reproduce that big victory, but MU had other ideas.

Trailing 45-35 at the 17:22 mark of the second, Methodist scored 14 of the games' next 18 points to tie the game at 49 with 10:11 to play. From this point on, the two teams were within four points of one another for all but 11 seconds as they were tied three times and traded the lead on four other occasions.

SU took the lead for good on freshman Alexis Hargbol's layup with 2:00 minutes remaining and eventually pushed that advantage to five points on a pair of Alicia Sanders free throws. The first of those two shots from the charity stripe made Sanders the all-time leader at SU - she passed the previous record of 305 set by Laura Johnson '85.

However, MU wasn't done yet.

Ashley Harris, who led all scorers with 20 points, scored her final three on a three-ball with 29 seconds left. The Lady Monarchs then fouled Sanders with 14 ticks remaining, putting the new record holder on the line to ice the game.

Unfortunately for the Hornets faithful, Sanders missed both free throws to keep the visitors in it.

Methodist turned it back over on the ensuing trip up the floor, setting SU up with an inbounds at midcourt.

Methodist's Stacy Williams appeared to steal that inbounds, but Zan Messer was called for a foul off the ball, sending Katherine Flint to the line with nine seconds remaining.

Flint then clinched the victory by calmly canning both of her attempts.

Hargbol, who played a season-high 36 minutes due an pre-game injury by fellow post Stephanie Harrold, had 17 points and 13 rebounds for the victors. Sanders chipped in 15 points and senior Cassie Womack had 10 rebounds in 20 minutes of action.

Kristen Whitehurst backed up Harris' 20 points with 11 of her own.

Shenandoah won the battle of the glass 44-42 and scored 23 points off of Methodist's 21 turnovers.

Box Score