Alabama A&M Uses Dominant First Quarter To Defeat Alcorn

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. – The Alcorn State University women's basketball program fell behind 17-6 in the first quarter and could not recover as the Lady Braves dropped the .500 in conference play, losing to the Lady Bulldogs, 64-50.

The Lady Braves (11-15, 7-7 SWAC) doubled up the Lady Bulldogs in points off turnovers (14-7).

Senior Toddriana Isler logged her second straight double-figure scoring game, tallying ten points while snatching a team-high six rebounds.

Freshman Cayla Obillo led the purple and gold in scoring with 12, including 3-of-4 from three, to go along with a tied for season-best four steals.

Alabama A&M (13-11, 9-4 SWAC) recorded the largest rebounding margin against Alcorn in a SWAC  matchup this season, grabbing 48 boards compared to the Lady Braves' 26.

Dariauna Lewis had a huge performance, knocking down eight of her nine field goal attempts (.889) while putting together a double-double with 22 points and 15 rebounds.

Lazurea Sanders fell just short of a double-double as well, posting 12 points as well as nine boards.

Deshawna Harper was the third Lady Bulldog with double-digit points, accumulating 16 points and four rebounds.

The first quarter belonged to the Lady Bulldogs, recording 17 of the game's first 19 points before Alcorn scored the final two buckets of the period to give AAMU a 17-6 after one. Alabama A&M lit the nets on fire to the tune of 8-for-14 (.571) shooting while the Braves were slow out of the gates converting just 3-of-17 (.176).

The second saw the maroon and white expand its lead to 21-6 but the Lady Braves found a groove, rattling off eight unanswered to cut the deficit to seven (21-14) at the 5:11 mark. The girls from Huntsville regained the control after that, outscoring Alcorn 11-7 in the latter half of the second quarter to lead 32-20 at the break.

The purple and gold got the margin back down to single digits with 4:43 left in the third quarter (37-28). Alabama A&M would follow that up with a 14-3 run to end the frame including ten consecutive points to garner a 20-point advantage at the start of the fourth, 51-31.

AAMU opened the final quarter with a basket before the visitors from Lorman started to make a move. Alcorn would go on a 13-2 outburst to capture momentum and give the Lady Braves life as they trailed by 11 with just over five minutes remaining (55-44). That would be as close as Coach Pruitt's club would get as Alabama A&M picked up the victory, 64-50.

The Lady Braves travel to Alabama State on Monday evening for its final road contest of the regular season, tip-off is set for 5:30 p.m. inside the Dunn-Oliver Acadome.
 
NOTES

- Alcorn leads the all-time series (28-19) but Alabama A&M extended its win streak to five straight in the series.

- AAMU could not miss in the first half, draining an absurd .536 (15-of-28) percent of its shots.

- The Lady Bulldogs' Dariauna Lewis was perfect over the first 20 minutes of action, going 6-for-6 from the floor while nearly posting a double-double (12 points, nine rebounds) at the half.

- The purple and gold won the fourth quarter, outscoring the maroon and white by a score of 19-13.
 
Quoting Alcorn head coach Courtney G. Pruitt
 
Overall Statement:
"I thought defensively we did a good job, not in the first half, on the offensive boards with [Dariauna] Lewis but I was very pleased with the way we came out defensively and stopped rotations. I was very displeased with our inability to score the basketball, we came out guns a blazing and only shot 3-of-17 in the first quarter as we went down into a huge deficit. That really hurt us, we were able to fight back and still be able to make runs during this game and we never stopped fighting in which we never gave up but we just got to score, we got to have somebody step up and score the ball. It wasn't like we didn't have opportunities, we had tons of opportunities, we shot the ball 61 times but we just got to be able to finish."
 
On missing a lot of high-percentage shots:
"We've tried everything in practice to remedy the problem and we just got to keep working at it. We're not going to give up, we're going to stay positive and keep pushing. We're still in the hunt of things, Prairie View was down last I checked the score, so we need to keep battling and we got to get ourselves back in the position to take fourth place."
 
Looking ahead to Alabama State:
"Since the little incident, Alabama State has been playing great basketball. They've really stepped up defensively and playing tough, so we expect a tough game especially at their place. You know their going to bring pressure, try to get us to turn over the ball like we want them to turnover the ball so we just got to pressure them but most importantly we've got to make shots. We put too much emphasis on letting our defense get everything done for us and we've got to be able to score the ball, its going to be a point of emphasis in practice tomorrow at Alabama State."
 
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