BATON ROUGE, La. – In the lowest scoring game of the season, Southern was able to scrape by the Alcorn State University women's basketball program 51-39 Saturday at the F.G. Clark Activity Center.
Alcorn (4-24, 3-13 SWAC) led Southern (16-11, 13-3 SWAC) at the half 20-19. Though, the first-place Jaguars used a 19-10 third quarter, and then slowed it down in the fourth to fend off any comeback attempt.
Junior
Charisma Walker turned in 11 points and seven rebounds. She helped Alcorn outscore Southern 16-11 off the bench. Sophomore
Jamaysha Bernard submitted nine points and eight rebounds.
The Jaguars were led by Danayea Charles who scored 11 points, and Taneara Moore with 10.
The Lady Braves scored the first two buckets of the game on a drive by junior
Jada Hargrove and a lay-up by Bernard. A jumper by senior
De'Asia Brown made it 8-2 at the 5:24 mark. A basket by Walker near the end of the quarter kept them ahead 10-6 heading into the second.
After the Jaguars tied it 10-10 early in the second, the Lady Braves went back on top 13-10 after a lay-up and free throw by Bernard with 6:04 remaining. After Southern cut it to 15-14, Brown drilled a three-pointers and Hargrove followed it up with a pull-up jumper to push the lead up to 20-14 with 2:00 to go.
The Jaguars scored the last five points of the half, but the Lady Braves led 20-19.
SU scored the first basket of the third quarter to take its first lead of the game, but a lay-in by Hargrove and a free throw by Brown put Alcorn back ahead 27-26 with 5:18 left.
The Jaguars answered with four straight points to lead 30-26 at the 3:58 mark. Southern scored five points in the final 12 seconds on a lay-up, steal and old-fashion three-point play to jump ahead 38-30 at the end of the quarter.
Southern took a 42-31 advantage with 6:26 remaining in the fourth. The Lady Braves got it down to 44-37 on a lay-up by Walker at the 3:13 mark, but couldn't get any closer. Alcorn shot just 4-for-14 (.286) in the final quarter.
The Lady Braves will be off Monday, but will play their only Thursday conference game of the year upcoming at Texas Southern at 5:30 p.m.
NOTES
- The six points allowed by the Lady Braves in the first quarter tied for the fewest they've given up in a single quarter this season.
- The 90 total points in the game were the fewest this year. The previous low was a 51-50 defeat to Alabama A&M.
- Walker tallied her 11th double-figure scoring game of the year. She was 5-for-10 from the floor.
- Hargrove logged 36 minutes after entering the game leading the league with a 33.0 mpg average. She's the only Lady Brave to start in all 28 matches.
- The game featured five ties and five lead changes. Alcorn did not trail until the second half.
Quoting Alcorn head coach Courtney G. Pruitt
Opening Statement
"The third quarter really hurt us. We turned it over four straight possessions and couldn't buy a basket. We called a quick timeout to try and regain our composure, but we were making too many mental mistakes. We gave up the ball when we didn't have to, and made too many unforced turnovers. We started the game great, but it just kept unraveling. It was disappointing but I like the way that we fought – I didn't like the way that we finished but I liked the way that we fought. We have two games left and we're still in the fight."
On the turnovers
"We had 24 turnovers, and in my opinion, at least 20 of them were unforced. We were throwing it out of bounds and we weren't coming up and meeting the passes. It was little ticky-tack stuff that we normally don't do. We're going to watch the film of this game closely and see exactly what went wrong. We'll see how we need to adjust so we don't make these same mistakes when we go to Texas."
On the tough shooting night
"To me, we just went cold. We only scored 10 points in the third quarter and nine in the fourth. We couldn't get going. We had wide-open lay-ups that we missed. We didn't make our free throws. It was just bad in the second half. If we would have repeated our first half performance in the second then we would have ended on top."
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