University of Southern Mississippi Athletics
Southern Miss
East Carolina
Southern Miss Falls To East Carolina, 68-52
2/22/2007 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 22, 2007
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HATTIESBURG, Miss. -- - East Carolina's Jasmine Young scored a career-high 29 points in leading the Pirates past Southern Miss, 68-52, Thursday night. Southern Miss drops to 14-14 overall and 8-7 in league play, while ECU improved to 15-13 and 10-5 in C-USA.
Liz Biland recorded her fourth double-double with 15 points and 11 rebounds, pacing the Lady Eagles and Amber Eugene added 14 points. For ECU, LaCoya Terry recorded her first career double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds and Cherie Mills rounded out the Pirate scoring with 11 points.
"You have to give Jasmine Young a tremendous amount of credit," Head Coach Joye Lee-McNelis said. "She got on track very early. We knew she was a very good player, and obviously she is one of the best and she is just a sophomore."
East Carolina opened the second with a 5-2 run, pushing its lead to 16 points, 42-26, at the 16:35 mark in the game. Over the next four minutes, Southern Miss out scored ECU, 16-5, cutting the lead to five, 47-42, with 12:18 remaining in the game. East Carolina regrouped and scored six unanswered points before Anna Patterson nailed a three-pointer to get the Lady Eagles within eight points, 53-45.
"When you have your shooters struggling against a zone defense, you're not going to have a whole lot of opportunities to get a win," McNelis said. "It was Liz Biland who kept things going for us early. There defense got us dismantled and we could not get into a flow at all offensively.
"We didn't play with a lot of urgency," said McNelis said. "Zones tend to put us to sleep and we got no offensive movement. But in the second half, we played with a sense of urgency. She played a lot harder and in an attack mode."
East Carolina answered the Eagles again, quickly pushing its lead back to 14 points, 61-47. Southern Miss made one last run at the Pirates, getting the score below double digits, 61-52 with 3:37 remaining. ECU ended the game on an 8-0 run.
East Carolina held Southern Miss to 33.9 percent shooting from the field, while the Pirates finished the game shooting 48.3 percent, including 66.7 percent from behind the arc. Southern Miss held the rebounding edge, 43-39.
Southern Miss trailed 37-24 at the half, shooting just 28.6 percent from the field.
The Lady Eagles conclude the regular at home against Marshall at 2 p.m., Saturday, with senior day festivities.
