Southern Miss
Memphis
Women's Basketball Falls To Memphis, 64-60
2/28/2008 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 28, 2008
MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Memphis connected on 7-of-8 free throws over the last 3:43, to pull out a 64-60 win over Southern Miss Thursday night.
During that stretch, Southern Miss scored only one basket and committed six crucial turnovers.
Pauline Love scored a career-high 27 points to go with 13 rebounds while Stephanie Helgeson also added a double-double with 14 points and 13 rebounds for Southern Miss (16-12, 7-8). Kendra Reed chipped in 11 points. For Memphis, Paris Leonard paced the Tigers with a double-double of 15 points and 10 rebounds followed by Jessica Hall with 13 and Aroha Jennings added 12.
"We turned the ball over six times during the stretch and when you do that, you can not win ball games not taking care of the basketball," coach Joye Lee-McNelis said. "It's disappointing and frustrating that we give another game away. You have to give Memphis credit because they came out and played hard in crunch time."
Southern Miss jumped out to the early 11-2 lead before Memphis (10-17, 7-8) put together a 7-2 to cut the lead to 13-11. Neither team was able to put any points on the board over a three-minute span. The Lady Eagles finally pushed ahead by five points, 20-15, but Memphis scored five unanswered points, knotting the game at 20-all.
With Southern Miss leading, 28-24, Memphis got a three-pointer from Leonard, followed by a layup by Jessica Jackson to give the Lady Tigers their first lead of the game. The lead changed three times in the last two minutes and Southern Miss led 32-31 at the half.
"It was a great game for 40 minutes," McNelis said. "Both team played extremely hard. The thing we struggled with was when they turned up the heat, we did not answer the call."
There were seven lead changes and three ties in the first seven minutes of the second half. With the score tied at 46-46, Southern Miss then scored six unanswered points, taking a 52-46 lead at the 9:42 mark. The Eagles eventually pushed their lead to seven, 58-51, just under six minutes remaining.
Memphis then scored the next eight points to take a 59-58 lead with 3:43 remaining in the game. Both team missed several scoring opportunities until Love connected on a bucket with 1:27, giving Southern Miss its last lead.
Memphis closed out the game on a 5-0 run.
Southern Miss concludes the regular at UAB Saturday at 2 p.m., before heading to the Conference USA Tournament hosted by UCF in Orlando, Mar. 6-9.
