LORMAN, Miss. – The Alcorn State University women's basketball program came extremely close to producing its first triple-double in years as sophomore
Diamond Hall came up one assist shy, guiding the purple and gold to a convincing wire-to-wire victory over Grambling State, 80-54.
The Lady Braves' (6-10, 2-2 SWAC) 26-point win was the largest margin of victory against a SWAC opponent since Alcorn defeated Alabama State by 32 in January of 2018.
Alcorn had five separate players log double-figures in the scoring department with senior
Charisma Walker and junior
LaRae Rascoe fronting the charge with 15 apiece. Junior
Kirdis Clark tacked on another 12 points while falling one board shy of a double-double while Hall and senior
Jada Hargrove both notched ten.
Hall put on an absolute show for the home faithful, dazzling her way to the team's first double-double performance of the season with ten points and a career-high 15 rebounds. Her nine assists were also a career-best and tied senior
Jada Hargrove for the most by a Lady Brave this season.
Walker's 15 points set a new season-best and tied her career-high for field goals with six.
Clark tallied a new career-high as well as her nine boards was second on the squad behind
Diamond Hall.
Hargrove snagged five steals for the third time in the 2019-20 campaign while the team has had a player accomplish the feat five times total so far this year.
Grambling State (2-13, 1-3 SWAC) received most of its offensive production from Candice Parramore (13) and Justice Coleman (12), as they accounted for 25 of the club's 54 points (.462).
Alexus Holt paced the Lady Tigers in both rebounds (8) and assists (5) while Kailyn Gideon rejected two Alcorn shots.
The first half of the opening quarter was a back-and-forth affair as the sides tied three times with the latest instance making the score 8-8. Alcorn would put six unanswered up on the board and ten of the last 13 points of the frame to move ahead 18-11 after one.
GSU countered the girls from Lorman with a 5-2 rally to cut the deficit to four, courtesy of a triple by Mylashia Yancy (20-16). Coach Pruitt's crew would bounce back with a 14-4 surge of its own to widen the gap to 14 at 34-20 before settling for a 35-24 edge at the intermission.
Grambling would once again try to scrape and claw its way back into the game as they trimmed the lead back down to six at 37-31. The Lady Braves were having none of it, blowing the doors off of the contest with a 14-2 explosion to watch its lead expand to as much as 21. The black and gold would get the final two buckets of the period but the damage was done as the home squad rolled into the fourth quarter holding a 54-37 edge.
Alcorn put the finishing touches on the rout in the final frame, outscoring the Lady Tigers 26-17 over the final ten minutes of regulation.
Diamond Hall fittingly put an exclamation point on the end of her outstanding performance, crossing over her defender and gliding to the basket for her tenth point of the evening to give her a double-double and cap off a 80-54 romp to get the Lady Braves back to .500 in SWAC play.
The Lady Braves will stay in the Magnolia State as they make their way to Itta Bena on Saturday to tangle with the Delta Devilettes at 2 p.m. inside the Harrison HPER Complex.
NOTES
- Alcorn evened the all-time series with Grambling State as both teams have 50 wins each after tonight's 100th meeting on the hardwood.
- The purple and gold outrebounded its opponent for only the second time this season, winning on the glass, 52-42.
- The Lady Braves won the turnover battle for the 13th time in 16 matchups, forcing 29 mistakes while making only 18 and doubling up GSU in points off of turnovers in the process (18-9).
- Alcorn doubled up Grambling in the paint as well (56-28), more than doubled its output off the bench (40-19), converted more second chance points (17-14) and had more fast break points (24-14).
Quoting Alcorn head coach Courtney G. Pruitt
On changing up the starting lineup:
"That's our "little Indian group" and we call it that because they're all over the place and they're on attack mode so we want them to be non-stop we want them to play hard, induce turnovers and get points. We want to play fast, speed kills and that's what we did tonight."
On 29 forced turnovers only turning into 18 points:
"A lot of times we just didn't look up the floor to actually go ahead to score, a lot of times we just backed it out and executed our offense because we didn't like what we had or we didn't like the looks we had running so we just wanted to be patient and take our time but still turn our defense into offense. That's a season-high for us with the 80 points and so we just wanted to maintain and we did that without turning it back over so I was very pleased with that and the way we played with different lineups at the beginning of the third and first quarters."
On 56 points in the paint:
"I love that, that's what we've been shooting for all season and that's what we finally got. We were patient and executed our offense, anytime we can get down low and take those high percentage shots and be able to make good on those 'chippies' we're going to win the ballgame."
#FearTheBrave
