Southern Miss
Rice
Southern Miss Knocks Off Rice, 65-50
1/25/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Jan. 25, 2009
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HOUSTON, Texas - Southern Miss used an 11-0 run early in the second half in pushing its lead to double digits over four minutes in defeating Rice for the first time in the four tries, 65-50, Sunday afternoon.
With the win Head Coach Joye Lee-McNelis notched her 300th career win.
"You have to congratulate our players on how the showed some resilience when Rice came storming back and pulled the game close," McNelis said. "I thought we showed a lot of poise in the way we just bump our lead by to double digits. A lot of that came with the play of Andrea (Barber) and Pauline (Love) and Tanesha (Washington) on the run getting some easy baskets for us. I thought that was the key in getting us back rolling."
Pauline Love paced the Lady Eagles (12-7, 5-1) with 16 points, followed by Stephanie Helgeson and Andrea Barber with 15 points each and Tanesha Washington chipped in 10. Love also added another double-double after hauling in 11 rebounds.
Megan Elliott led Rice (5-14, 0-6) with 16 points and Maudess Fulton added 15 points.
Southern Miss opened the game scoring the first eight points just four minutes into the game. Rice finally got in the scoring column on an Elliott free throw at the 15:57 mark.
Southern Miss eventually built as many as a 12-point lead, 25-13, with 6:30 to go before the half.
From there, Rice outscored Southern Miss, 8-2, over 2:53 and cut the lead to single digits, 27-22, with 3:37 remaining in the half. Neither team was able to score any more points before the break.
The Owls came back in the second half and outscored the Lady Eagles, 11-7, cutting the lead to one, 34-33, just four minutes into the second half. From there, Southern Miss hit a roll and scored the next 11 points to take control again.
USM eventually built a 19-point lead, when Barber connected on three of her 15 points. Barber just missed a triple double as she finished with nine assists and eight rebounds.
"The play of Andrea was very solid," said McNelis. "I didn't think we played well in the first half, but you have to give Rice a tremendous amount credit. We came out of the starting blocks and we played very well. We sort of lost our focus and Rice came back. Fortunately, we had half time and we were able to get rolling again."
There were no ties or lead changes with Southern Miss leading from start to finish.
"I was proud of the overall team effort we had today," McNelis said.
Southern Miss returns home to begin a four-game homestand beginning with Marshall, Jan. 29 at 7 p.m.
