Southern Miss
Tulsa
Lady Eagle Basketball Suffers 74-71 Setback Against Tulsa
1/16/2011 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Jan. 16, 2011
Box Score | Box Score in PDF Format 
HATTIESBURG, Miss. - The Southern Miss women's basketball team suffered another setback in Conference USA play, losing to Tulsa 74-71 Sunday evening.
Southern Miss (6-11, 1-3) placed four players in double-figure scoring led by senior Tanesha Washington with 18 points. Junior Rachel Vigers had 16 points while Geneshia Dunbar and Brittany Johnson came off the bench to add 12 and 10 points, respectively. Jamierra Faulkner registered her fourth game with 11 assists.
Taleya Mayberry led Tulsa (5-7, 1-3) with a game-high 19 points followed by Chanice Scott with 18 and Amanda Mason chipped in 13.
"We got off to such a good start because our defense gave us opportunities to get some transition buckets," Coach Joye Lee-McNelis said. "We made defensive stops, we got rebounds and we got easy buckets on the run. We get that going, but we end up getting into foul trouble. We don't get a lot of production from our bench and we struggle. We were very fortunate to go in at the half with a five-point lead."
Tulsa scored the first five points of the game before the Lady Eagles got on track and scored 16 unanswered points over a 3:14 span. Scott halted the USM run with a three-point basket to get the score, 16-8. Johnson came right back and added a bucket to push the lead to 10. Scott answered with a basket to get the margin under 10.
From there, Southern Miss outscored Tulsa 13-3 in taking a 31-16 lead at the 6:47 mark in the half. However, Tulsa finally got its offense in gear and scored 11 straight points to cut the lead to just five, 31-26. The Lady Eagles went into intermission with a 37-32 lead.
"We came out at the half and for whatever reason, I have no clue as to why we stop running the basketball on made baskets," McNelis said. "I asked them in the first timeout what are we doing. We continued to not run our transition game. That's what got us in the game and it was easy to see that it worked. The difference in this game was, Tulsa played to win and we played not to lose. That's the bottom line."
Tulsa opened the second half with a 12-6 run and took its first lead at 44-43. From there, the teams traded baskets over the next 2:59. With the score tied at 49-49, Tulsa outscored Southern Miss, 9-3, in taking the lead for good. The Golden Hurricane led by as many as eight points, 62-54, with 7:53 remaining, when USM scored seven straight points to cut the lead to 62-61 with 4:27 to go. Loren McDaniel and Scott scored two free throws apiece in pushing the lead back to five.
Southern Miss missed an opportunity to tie or take the lead under a minute, but Tulsa got a big block from Mayberry and came away with the rebound. Amanda Mason converted a couple of free throws to maintain the four-point advantage. Faulkner found Vigers underneath with just 13 seconds for a quick basket to make it, 73-71, but the Eagles have to foul to get the ball back and Mayberry made one-of-two to seal the win.
Southern Miss is back on the road on Thursday, Jan. 20, for a game at Tulane. Tipoff is set for 7 p.m.
