Southern Miss
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Mississippi State
Women's Basketball Team Falls to Mississippi State, 50-40
12/15/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Dec. 15, 2010
Box Score | Box Score in PDF Format 
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - Plague by a cold-shooting night and turnovers, Southern Miss women's basketball team lost to in-state rival Mississippi State by a score of 50-40.
The Lady Eagles finished the game shooting an uncharacteristic 21.3 percent from the field including a dismal 12.0 percent in the second half as Southern Miss fell to 5-4 on the year. Mississippi State improved to 6-2.
Jamierra Faulkner led the way with 13 points and Danielle Johnson came off the bench to score 11 points. Ashley Brown led Mississippi State with a game-high 14 points and Danielle Rector chipped in 11 points for the visitors.
"We could not get that spark and we could not execute offensively," Coach Joye Lee-McNelis said. "Defensively, if you hold a team to 50 points you should be able to win a game. At times we played unbelievable on defense and for 40 minutes we did a descent job. Offensively, we were absolutely horrible. We did not have the energy or spark that was needed."
State scored the first three points of the game, but Southern Miss came right back to scored five points on basket from Tanesha Washington and three-point play by Faulkner. The Bulldogs tied the game at 5-5. Both teams traded turnovers and Washington added another basket to put the Eagles up 7-5.
The teams traded baskets over the next 10 minutes. Southern Miss led 15-14 at 6:13 mark when MSU scored the next four points to take an 18-15 lead. Danielle Johnson cut the lead to one on two free throws, 18-17. State then got consecutive baskets from Rector including a big three-pointer as the shot clock was winding down to push their lead to 23-17 with 3:23 to go before the half. Faulkner added a jumper for the Eagles before Diamber Johnson answered for State to keep the lead at six. Danielle Johnson hit her one of her three treys in closing the gap to three points, but Mary Kathryn Govero banked a shot off the left side as time expired to give the Bulldogs a 27-22 lead at the half.
"I thought Danielle Johnson was the one player who came off the bench and gave us some baskets," McNelis said. "Jamierra Faulkner and Tanesha Washington got into early foul trouble and we're not going to win games if they are not on the floor. There was a lot of disappointment in the locker room about the way we played in that first half. We just didn't show up tonight."
Southern Miss opened the second half with a three-pointer by Danielle Johnson to get the score to 27-25. After that, Mississippi State scored seven points over 8:21 for a 34-25 lead with 12:01 remaining. During that span, the Lady Eagles were 0-9 from the field with five turnovers. The Bulldogs led by as many as 12 on two occasions with the last coming at the 5:14, 44-32. The closest the Lady Eagles could get was seven, 47-40, with only a minute remaining in the game.
Southern Miss hits the road for a pair of games at the St. John's-Chartwells Holiday Classic, Dec. 18-19. The Lady Eagles open with No. 18 St. John's on Saturday at 12 p.m., and will play either Fresno State or UC Santa Barbara on Sunday at 11 a.m. or 1 p.m., central.
