NORFOLK, Va. – If there is such a thing as a moral victory, the Norfolk State women's basketball team earned one of the biggest wins of the year against William & Mary. Unfortunately, a moral victory was all it was.

Showing plenty of fight against a Tribe team that was coming off an upset of Virginia Tech, NSU forced double overtime and nearly came away with the victory before falling to William & Mary, 79-76, Monday evening at Joseph Echols Hall.

The Tribe missed a 3-pointer at the end of the first half, and then Jaclyn McKenna converted a layup with 16 seconds to go to force the second overtime. NSU, which had a four-point lead in the first overtime, stretched it to five in the second extra stanza before William & Mary clamped down on defense.

The Tribe forced NSU to go for two down by three points at the end of the second overtime with the 3-point line tightly guarded. Kyla Kerstetter ran down the court on the inbounds pass and converted a layup with one second to go to ice the win. The Spartans scored just two points in the last three and a half minutes of the second overtime.

NSU's eight-point lead in the first half was the largest by either team throughout the game. The Spartans had the advantage throughout most of the first half before the Tribe came back to take a four-point lead at the break, 26-22. William & Mary erased a four-point deficit late in the second half.

NSU fell to 4-2 on the year, as the Spartans nearly ended a nine-game losing streak to the Tribe (3-2). NSU's last victory in the series occurred Jan. 12, 2000, and only one of those nine setbacks since then has been by single digits.

William & Mary defeated NSU by an average margin of 31 points per game the last three years, including a 50-point win three years ago.

Senior Whitney Long added 21 points on 8-of-17 shooting, including 5-of-10 from 3-point range, with five rebounds, three steals and two assists. NSU held the edge on the stat sheet, shooting 30-of-69 (43.5 percent), compared to 28-of-73 (38.4 percent) for the Tribe. William & Mary shot 7-of-28 from long range, while NSU was more efficient, hitting 5-of-15.

The Spartans also had a 44-42 edge in rebounds and were a perfect 11-of-11 from the free throw line. Despite both teams committing 16 fouls, William & Mary had 10 more attempts from the charity stripe (16-of-21).

Sophomore Rae Corbo added 18 points on 7-of-15 shooting with five rebounds and four assists, and sophomore Rachel Gordon and junior Batavia Owens chipped in with 12 and 10 points, respectively. Gordon completed the double-double with 13 rebounds while also adding a career-high four assists. Junior Recca Trice had a team-high seven assists on the night.

The Spartans hit 6-of-6 from the free throw line in the first overtime to get the lead to four, 65-61, and then Trice found Long for two with 1:45 left to give NSU a 67-63 lead. McKenna hit a pair of free throws in between two NSU turnovers with 56 seconds left and then converted a layup after an offensive board with 16 seconds to go. Long got trapped by a pair of defenders on the other end and could not get a shot off at the end of the first overtime.

In the second, the Spartans quickly went back up by five on a traditional 3-point play by Trice and then again on a basket by Brooks with 3:43 on the clock. NSU, though, missed its next six shots, and a three-point play by Emily Correal at the 1:27 mark proved to be the game winner.

Trice had nine points on the night, as the starting five of Corbo, Gordon, Owens, Long and Trice accounted for 70 of the team's 76 points on the night.

Correal led the Tribe with 21 points and 15 rebounds, while McKenna added 17 points and eight boards. Taysha Pye tallied 12 points, and Katherine DeHenzel also reached double figures with 11 to go along with five assists. Janine Aldridge had game highs with eight assists and five steals with eight points. The Spartans held Aldridge and Pye to just 6-of-29 shooting from the field.

NSU caught William & Mary off guard early on to start the game, pulling out to an eight-point lead, 13-5, at the 13:27 mark after a pair of free throws from Corbo and five points from Long. A 10-2 run by the Tribe tied it at 15-15 before Long put NSU back on top with a trey with 9:36 left in the first stanza.

The Spartans were held scoreless for four and a half minutes, but Long's basket at 1:28 ended the drought with NSU down by just four, 26-22.

After William & Mary took a 28-22 lead early in the second half, Owens hit a pair of layups and Corbo tied it at 28-28, but a 9-2 run by the Tribe gave them a seven-point lead, 37-30, with just over 15 minutes to go. NSU chipped away, getting the deficit down to two twice, first on a fastbreak layup from Trice and then again on a basket in the paint from freshman Ebony Brown.

Corbo finally put NSU back on top with 7:11 to go on another fastbreak, and then Gordon got the lead to four with 5:39 left. Correal hit a pair of free throws with 2:04 remaining, and McKenna converted a layup to tie it at 55-55 with 1:19 to go. Gordon's basket with 56 seconds to go gave the Spartans a two-point lead, but a turnover on an inbounds pass on their next possession led to a Pye jumper with 28 second left.

Pye got the rebound on NSU's miss at the other end of the court but was unable to get a long-range shot to go, forcing overtime.

The game marked just the fourth time ever NSU has gone to double overtime against an opponent. Only one other time in the Division I era have the Spartans been perfect from the charity stripe with a minimum of 10 free throws, a 13-of-13 performance at Hampton in Feb. 2007.

The first conference games of the season await NSU beginning Saturday against Savannah State at 4 p.m. at Echols Hall, followed by South Carolina State at home on Monday.