Southern Miss
Alabama
Women's Basketball Team Falls To Alabama, 87-61
12/30/2009 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Dec. 30, 2009
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - Pauline Love and Candace Rucker combined for 44 points but it was enough as Alabama downed Southern Miss, 87-61, in women's basketball action Wednesday.
Southern Miss fell to 4-8 on the season while Alabama improved to 8-5. Love finished with 10 rebounds to go with 24 points and two steals.
"You have to give Alabama credit because they got out and guarded us and disrupted us offensively," Coach Joye Lee-McNelis said. "At times, our offensively flow was good when we got the ball in Rucker's hands as she was able to create. They put a lot of pressure on our guards and we didn't handle that very well. They have to get more confident in themselves. We didn't do a good job with our post defense."
Alabama placed five players in double figure scoring led by Varisia Raffington with 21 points followed by Courtney Strauthers with 15, Ericka Russell had 14, Carmen McCoy and Dedrea Magee chipped in 13 and 10 points, respectively.
Southern Miss improved on its shooting percentage in the second half, connecting on 40 percent from the field, but Alabama also improved and connected on 53 percent. The Tide held the rebounding edge, 41-35.
"In the first half, we were executing our game and everything was fine even though they hit a couple of threes," McNelis said. "We told our players that we were ok. We made adjustments and got back into the flow of things and got some confidence going. We were able to execute and chip away at that lead, then we turn the ball over and Alabama goes back up. We made our own mistakes tonight."
Alabama jumped out to a 7-0 lead before Love scored the Eagles' first points at the 17:49 mark. USM finally cut the lead to one, 7-6, on two free throws by Love and a basket by Rucker. Alabama then scored the next six points to push the lead back to seven, 13-6.
Southern Miss then put together a 9-4 run to get within two, 17-15, with Rucker and Love leading the way. From there the Tide ran off seven straight, pushing the lead to nine points, 24-15, with Strauthers doing most of the damage with easy inside baskets. Southern Miss kept the margin within single digits until Alabama benefitted from a 9-2 run to take a 35-21 lead. The Tide led 46-31 at the half, shooting 45.2 percent from the field while USM shot just 37.9 percent. Alabama also scored 22 points off 12 southern Miss turnovers.
Southern Miss returns to action on Jan. 3 when the Lady Eagles host Louisiana Tech in a 2 p.m., tip.
