Southern Miss
Rice
Women's Basketball Make it Five Straight Wins at Home
2/20/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Feb. 20, 2010
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - Pauline Love scored 21 points and added 15 rebounds to pace Southern Miss over Rice 68-60 in Conference USA women's basketball action here Saturday afternoon at Reed Green Coliseum.
Southern Miss (9-17 overall, 5-8 C-USA) opened the game on a 13-0 run and kept their winning ways alive at home over Owls. The Lady Eagles have now won five straight at home dating back to their victory over UTEP on Jan. 30.
Love recorded her 16th double-double of the season. The double-double was also her 55th of her career. Love put up 17 points and pulled down eight rebounds in the first half. It is her third consecutive double-double.
Tanesha Washington went into double digits in scoring for the 14th time this year. She finished the game with 18 points to go along with five rebounds.
Southern Miss set the tone early as the game's first shot, a three-point attempt by Washington, went down touching nothing but net just 26 seconds into the game.
The Lady Eagles were opportunistic for the next five minutes, taking advantage of four Rice turnovers, a block by Candace Rucker and grabbing six rebounds, to go up 13-0. The Lady Owls were able to sink their first basket, a long-range three by Tara Watts, with 15:13 to go in the half.
The lead was kept to at least eight as the first half progressed but the Owls were never able to get any closer. The Lady Eagles were able to push their lead to as much as 21 in the first half and were up 35-14 with 6:04 to go.
Rice opened up the second half by forcing an early turnover and turning into an uncontested three-point shot from the right side of the court by Megan Elliot. The trend continued as the Owls were able to take their first lead of the game at 49-48 with 10:13 to go in the game.
"We allowed them to get back into the game," Southern Miss coach Joy Lee McNelis. "Rice was on fire. They hit every basket they needed."
However, McNelis saw calmness in her team that she had not seen earlier in the season.
"The one thing I saw, in the time, from the Lady Eagles was that they did not panic," McNelis said. "There was not a panic. Again, someone is banking in the three, like at Marshall, we were scared to death. There was total panic.
"We were not in that situation. We were real calm as a team. We went down and we executed down the stretch, and we got rebounds when we needed to get rebounds."
Two crucial free-throws by Rucker with 3:08 to go put the Lady Eagles back in the driver's seat with a 61-60 lead. Southern Miss held Rice scoreless the rest of the way, adding seven more points to send the Owls to a 12-14 overall record and 6-7 in league play.
Rucker finished the game with 13 points and eight rebounds. Geneshia Dunbar added eight points and seven rebounds. Danielle Johnson put up four points while Ashlee Kelley and Erin Gatling both added two.
On the boards, Southern Miss out-rebounded the Owls 43-30. Love is just three rebounds shy from becoming just the fourth player in Lady Eagles' history to record both 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds in a career.
The Lady Eagles next hit the road with two games beginning Thursday, Feb. 25 at Tulsa. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m.
