Texas Southern Defeats Alcorn On Senior Night

LORMAN, Miss. – The Alcorn State University women's basketball program battled through adversity, falling to the Texas Southern Lady Tigers on Senior Night, 81-67.

The Lady Braves (13-17, 9-9 SWAC) dominated off the bench, providing 28 points from its reserves compared to just seven from TSU.

In her final home game in the purple and gold, senior Toddriana Isler went out with her fifth career double-double and second of the season, posting team-high in points (12) and rebounds (16) while tying a career-best in assists (4).

Fellow senior Jada Hargrove contributed 14 points to go along with six boards and an assist.

Junior Nyenkeer Malwal logged her second double-figure scoring night of the campaign, recording ten points.

Senior Charisma Walker had two points and a rebound in her last game inside the Davey L. Whitney Complex.

Texas Southern (19-10, 14-4 SWAC) shot 42.2 percent from the floor while scorching the nets from downtown to the tune of a 9-for-22 afternoon (.409).

Ciani Cryor went off for the visiting Lady Tigers, pouring in 30 points including a 15-of-16 effort from the charity stripe as well as grabbing eight rebounds and handing out eight assists.

Niya Mitchell continued her domination of the SWAC this season, tallying another double-double with 16 points and 16 boards while shooting 7-of-9 (.778), stealing four and blocking two others.

Ataiya Bridges (16) and Richelle Velez (12) rounded out the double-digit scorers for the maroon and gray.

The opening frame saw the two sides jostling for position as a triple by Hargrove gave the Lady Braves a 7-6 advantage at the first media timeout. Texas Southern returned the favor, edging Alcorn 7-6 in the remaining five minutes after the media as the two squads were deadlocked at 12 following the conclusion of the first.

An Obillo jumper with 8:40 in the second quarter gave the purple and gold a three-point cushion at 18-15. Texas Southern came screaming back with a run of 16 unanswered to stun the home crowd and move in front by 13, 31-18. Coach Pruitt's girls responded with a surge of its own, outscoring the Lady Tigers 10-3 over the remainder of the first half to put the Lady Braves behind 34-28 at the halftime break.

TSU held a 39-35 advantage with 6:02 left in the third before Alcorn starting surging again, using nine consecutive points to reclaim the lead at 44-39. The maroon and gray would double up the Lady Braves the rest of the frame by a count of 14 to 7, staking a 53-51 advantage into the fourth.

Things continued to stay tight over the first six minutes of the final period as Texas Southern clung tightly to a 67-64 upper-hand at the 3:55 mark. The visitors from Houston would pull away from there as they ended the night on a 14-3 run to come away victorious in Lorman by a score of 81-67.

The Lady Braves will be the #5 seed in the SWAC Tournament and will travel to Alabama A&M on Tuesday with a trip to the semifinals in Birmingham on the line. Tip-off is slated for 6 p.m.
 
NOTES

- In the 80th edition of this matchup, the Lady Braves fell to 55-25 all-time over TSU. The Lady Tigers have started to heat up in the series of late as they are 8-2 over the last ten meetings.

- The Lady Braves have more than tripled its win total from 2018-19 (4) and have the most wins in a campaign (13) since the 2011-12 squad that won 14 games.

- Texas Southern won the turnover battle (26-22) and was one of the few teams this year to out-steal the Lady Braves (14-8).
 
Quoting Alcorn head coach Courtney G. Pruitt
 
Opening statement:
"The biggest thing is that it's really tough to battle hurdles when one player shoots more free throws than your entire team. They shot 28 free throws for the game and that's where the separation was in my opinion, we were only down by three or four going into the fourth quarter and the whistle just kept blowing. They were steady going to the free-throw line and the same fouls that were being committed on their end were being committed on our end so we just wasn't getting a fair shake. We had 12 free throws for the game and made ten, shooting 83 percent and they shot 28 free throws so that's where they got their points from. If you look at every statistical category, they shot the ball 64 times, they were 27-of-64 from field-goal range while we were 25-of-68. We were dead even in all the categories except for free throws so they had more opportunities to shoot the ball than we did and that was the difference."
 
What was the game plan to stop Texas Southern's Ciani Cryor?:
"We was just trying to contain her and not allow her to facilitate, she really didn't hurt us from the perimeter since she was 6-of-16 so she didn't get all her points from there it was from the free-throw line. You can't guard a free-throw shooter so defensively I thought we did a good job and we got them to turnover the ball, we just didn't capitalize, we would end up turning it right back over or we would end up rushing our shots. I thought we came out and played a heck of a ballgame, I thought that we showed up to play, knowing what was on the line and how important it was but it was tough to play the adversity."
 
On matching up well with Texas Southern:
"I think we did a great job scoring and going basket-for-basket with them, I think we did a great job defensively of holding them to well under their average because usually they're an 80-point team and at halftime they only had 34 points. So anytime you do that, you're doing a good job and we had to foul to get back into the game but you just got to keep battling and stay edgy.
 
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