BATON ROUGE, La. ? Louisiana native, Monique Jones led all scorers with 21 points Saturday afternoon to help the University of South Alabama women’s basketball team capture its first road win of the season with a 61-46 victory over Southern University at the G.G. Clark Activity Center.
The Lady Jags (5-4) will next return home to open the Sun Belt Conference portion of their schedule against Middle Tennessee, Thursday night at 7 p.m. at the Mitchell Center. With the loss, Southern remains winless on the season, falling to 0-7.
“This was a big win for us today, because it is our first road win,” said South Alabama women’s basketball head coach Rick Pietri. “We get to get that behind us as we move into conference play and that was a main objective coming into this game. Defensively in the first half, we did a great job of swarming around the interior, which is where Southern’s strength is. In the second half, we didn’t do as good of a job and Fredricka Lewis just was able to make some plays. Fortunately for each basket that they got, we were able to respond and not allow them to climb back.”
With two and a half minutes played in the opening half, Southern held the early advantage at 7-2 after a Krystal Huggins basket and bonus free throw. Over the next eight minutes, Ferriday, La., native Monique Jones began to mount the Jaguar charge scoring 13 of USA’s next 18 points. Jones gave South Alabama its first lead of the half (10-9) at the 14:50 mark with her second three pointer of the day and later put the Jags up 18-11 with another bucket. Southern had its offensive woes in the first period of play, recording a 12 minute stretch that saw the Jaguars hit only one of 14 shots from the floor, including 10 straight misses. Patriece Brunner gave USA its largest lead of the half at 30-16 on a lay up off a beautiful interior pass from Valencia Boswell with just under a minute remaining in the first half.
Jones led all scorers in the first stanza with 15 points on 6-of-9 shooting, including 3-of-3 from long range.
In the second half, South Alabama maintained its advantage and never allowed Southern to get any closer than 12 on two occasions. Every time Southern tried to start a rally, South Alabama had the answer. A Tiffany Jones free throw at the 2:37 mark to cut the deficit to 55-43, but USA's Jones answered right back with her fifth trey of the night. South Alabama led by as many as 17 in the second half and went on to take the 61-46 victory.
Jones led USA with 21 points and Whitney Woodard finished with 11 for the Jags. Southern was paced by Lewis’ 15 and Jones’ 12 points.
