Southern Miss Ends Home Schedule With A Loss

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Southern Miss Ends Home Schedule With A Loss

Michelle Poindexter was one of two freshmen to score 11 points

Deondra Carter scored 11 points in the Lady Eagle loss

HATTIESBURG, Miss. ? Southern Miss failed to make any ground in the Conference USA standings, losing to Louisville, 67-58, in women's basketball action Sunday afternoon in Reed Green Coliseum.

Southern Miss fell to 14-10 overall and 2-9 in league play while Louisville improved to 16-8 and 8-3.

Freshmen Deondra Carter and Michelle Poindexter paced the Lady Eagles with 11 points each. Sara Nord led the visitors with 19 points followed by four other Lady Cardinals in double figure scoring with Angel Bradley's 13, Jessica Huggins scored 12, Kim Graham had 11 and Jazz Covington chipped in 10 points.

"We started off better today than we did on Friday night," Head Coach Rick Reeves said. "We continue to struggle with our shooting at times. We get good looks, we just don't finish. I thought we allowed too many offensive rebounds for them (Louisville). We needed to limit them to one shot, but we weren't able to do that and that hurts us."

Southern Miss opened the game with a 7-2 lead, but Louisville scored four-straight points to cut the lead to one, 7-6. Southern Miss held a six-point lead, 17-11, at the 12:37 mark in the half, when the Cardinals used a 9-0 run over 1:55, taking a 20-17 lead. The Cardinals led by as many as 13 before the half, but the Eagles used an 8-2 run to cut the lead to seven just before the half. The Cardinals led 36-29.

Southern Miss scored the first four points of the second half in 1:02, cutting the Louisville lead to three, 36-33. That was as close as the Eagles would get. Louisville then ran off 10-straight points, building its lead to 13, 46-33, with 14:08 remaining in the game. Southern Miss managed to cut the lead to nine, 46-37, at the 11:41 mark and did not get any closer until Poindexter hit the basket with 15 seconds remaining.

Southern Miss finished the game shooting 40.4 percent from the field while Louisville hit 43.9 percent. The Lady Eagles held the rebounding edge, 37-34. Louisville scored 25 points off 20 Lady Eagle turnovers.

Southern Miss hits the road for a pair of games at USF on Feb. 20 and at UAB on Feb. 22. Southern Miss is still fighting for a spot in the 12-team conference tournament, Mar. 4-7, in Fort Worth, Texas.

University of Southern Mississippi Athletics

Southern Miss Ends Home Schedule With A Loss

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