BATON ROUGE, La. - The Alcorn State University women's basketball program nearly overcame a 13-point fourth-quarter deficit but could not catch Southern University as the squad was downed 73-67 Tuesday at the F.G. Clark Activity Center in the first round of the Southwestern Athletic Conference Tournament.
"We fought hard; the girls played hard; we put our full-court pressure on and just came up short," said Lady Braves head women's basketball coach Courtney Pruitt. "I thought we executed well defensively forcing them into 18 turnovers and turned defense into offense. That was something that we were proud of and something we've executed all season long."
On the offensive end for Alcorn (9-21), senior Brianna Luton and juniors Alexus Freeman and Tia Sanders tallied 15 points apiece. Freeman neared a double-double as she also grabbed eight boards in addition to six steals.
Southern (14-13) had four student-athletes score at least 12 points including Miaya Crowder and Samantha Duncan who each totaled a game-high 17.
The Lady Braves went ahead 5-2 in the first after Luton drained a three, but the Lady Jags responded with 10 straight points, four each from Crowder and Briana Green.
Alcorn's next field goal came at 2:02 on a jumper from junior Gabrielle Jubinville that put the score at 14-9 in Southern's favor.
The Lady Braves were outscored 20-16 in the second and 21-18 in the third, resulting in the aforementioned 57-44 margin entering the fourth.
Sanders sparked a nine-point run with a trey at 8:27 left to play. Luton then scored three consecutive buckets in the paint, the last two coming on steal-and-scores in Alcorn's full-court press that resulted in score of 57-53.
Later in the quarter with 1:24 to go, another long-distance shot from Sanders put the Lady Braves within one possession at 64-61. Alcorn's next two chances on the offensive end came up empty as Luton committed an offensive foul and Freeman followed with a missed layup.
Southern made eight of its final 10 free-throw attempts to seal the game.
NOTES
- The SWAC's best defense against the long ball held the Lady Jags scoreless from beyond the arc as they went 0-for-4.
- This was Sanders' 18th, Luton's 17th and Freeman's 16th double-digit scoring outing of their careers.
- The contest marked Freeman's fifth 15-5-5 outing of her career at Alcorn.
- Senior Henrietta Wells finished with two blocks, earning her 24th multiple-block performance of the season. She accumulated 88 total blocks this season, most in the league.
- The Lady Braves were without freshman Aysha Kirkland, a key defender. She went down with an injury at PVAMU.
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