Lady Braves Go Cold In Second Half

LORMAN, Miss. – The Alcorn State University women's basketball program lost for the first time when leading at the half this season, making only 23.8 percent of its shots in the second half to fall to Jackson State, 83-67.
 
The Lady Braves (5-10, 1-2 SWAC) were plus-ten in margin and logged 12 steals but were unable to overcome its poor shooting.

Junior LaRae Rascoe fronted the offense with 22 points, her second outing of more than 20 this season and has dropped double-figure scoring efforts in five consecutive ballgames.

Junior Kirdis Clark tied her career-best in assists with four on the evening with all of them coming in the first half.

Senior Toddriana Isler recorded her second contest of ten or more points against the Lady Tigers, dropping 13 while going 6-for-11 (.545) from the floor.

Sophomore Diamond Hall became the first Lady Brave of the 2019-20 campaign to pull down double-digit rebounds, snatching a season-high 11 boards including eight on offense.

Jackson State (5-8, 3-0 SWAC) got two double-double performances courtesy of Marneisha Hamer (24 points, 10 rebounds) and Sumer Williams (13 points, 15 rebounds).

Dayzsha Rogan had a huge night as well for JSU, compiling 20 points to go along with five steals on the defensive side of the ball.

The Lady Tigers put its foot on the accelerator from the opening tip, scoring seven unanswered to start the afternoon. The purple and gold would fight back, cutting the lead to 14-11 with 2:17 left in the opening frame after senior Toddriana Isler made her fourth bucket of the quarter. Both teams were evenly matched for the remainder of the period as JSU had a 19-17 edge after one.

Alcorn took its first lead of the game with a three-ball by LaRae Rascoe, which eventually led to Coach Pruitt's club ahead by five 28-23. Both sides would notch ten points each from there on out as the Lady Braves held a 38-33 edge into the locker rooms.

Halfway through the third frame, the purple and gold maintained a six-point advantage at 47-41. The blue and white visitors from Jackson caught fire, contributing 13 consecutive points and 13 of the final 14 points of the quarter to go ahead 54-48 heading to the fourth.

Six points is as close as Alcorn would get in the final frame as JSU extending its margin to as high as 21 points, outscoring the Lady Braves 29-19 in the fourth to pull away by a final of 83-67.

The purple and gold host the Grambling State Lady Tigers Monday evening at 5:30 p.m. inside the Davey L. Whitney Complex.
 
NOTES
- Jackson State leads the all-time series 52-43 and has now won five straight contests over Alcorn.

- JSU nearly doubled up the purple and gold in points off the bench (56-29) and points in the paint (50-28).
 
Quoting Alcorn head coach Courtney G. Pruitt
 
Opening statement:
"It's very disappointing, we could not buy a basket, we just went on a scoring drought there at the end of the third quarter with like three minutes left and we couldn't find it. We weren't getting open shots, not running great offense, we were getting second chances at it but we kind of just went cold and by the time we got out of it we couldn't sustain or find a way to get back in it because we just couldn't make shots when we needed one. It's very disappointing and that kind of loss hurts because you're better than that team and proved that you can compete with them we just let it go because we couldn't make any shots."
 
On getting off to a slow start:
"Got off to a slow start but despite that we regained and still stayed within three after the first quarter and then went in with the lead at halftime. That shows that we can score and that we can play, we forced them into 31 turnovers, anytime a team into 31 turnovers that shows that you're the better team but we just went cold, there's no explanation for that."
 
On Jackson State outscoring Alcorn 50-28 in the paint:
"It was just what we couldn't do in the paint, we had a lot of bad rotations in the second half because they didn't have that many points in the first half, it was the second half where we couldn't get our defense and our bearings up under us because we just kept missing their backside cut, we were overhelping on the high post and they would go to the high-low game and we were missing out on that low-post action so it was just our faults and bad reads, bad defense but despite that we were still able to turn them over we just couldn't rotate right. That was our fault because we held them in the first half but when the defense went down to the other end where the girls couldn't hear us that was a bad deal for us."
 
On moving forward from this loss:
"We turned Jackson State over 31 times so its nice to know that our defense is working and that we're getting quality shots because no team is shooting the ball 77 times. We have a great ball team and everybody knows that and have been able to see that we just got to find a way to score down the stretch. Its not our first three quarters that are hurting us, its our last one so I'm encouraged with this team, I know that they'll keep fighting and I know that we can win to place in the top-four in the conference. We're going to stay encouraged, fight and come out Monday night where I'll guarantee you'll see a better team out of this Lady Braves basketball club."

#FearTheBrave