MOBILE, Ala. ? Jag seniors Valencia Boswell and Whitney Woodard combined for 33 points to help the South Alabama women’s basketball team rally from a halftime deficit for the third straight game and pick up a key 44-37 Sun Belt Conference victory over UALR Saturday night at the Mitchell Center.
“This is a huge win for us tonight, beating a very good team in UALR,” said South Alabama women’s basketball head coach Rick Pietri. “Fortunately for us tonight we were able to do a good job defending (Nikya) Hughes, (Renee) Renz and (Kim) Sitzmann.”
With the win, the Lady Jags move above .500 with a 9-8 overall record and 3-4 mark in the Sun Belt. The Jags also move into a tie with Florida International for third place in the East Division. UALR drops to 12-6 on the season and 5-3 in conference play. USA will next head to Lafayette, La., to face Louisiana-Lafayette on Wednesday at 7 p.m.
UALR’s Anshel Cooper led the way early on for the Lady Trojans, hitting her first five shots from the floor and recording their first 10 points. South Alabama didn’t help its cause, as the Jags hit just one of their first 11 shots from the floor and turned the ball over seven times during the first 11 minutes of play. Trailing by six (12-6) with just under seven minutes to play in the opening half, USA began to claw back. Valencia Boswell was able to drive and convert back-to-back layups and after a pair of Patriece Brunner free throws, the Jags tied the contest up at 12-12 with four minutes, 19 seconds to go in the half. Cooper gave the Lady Trojans the lead again when she converted one of two shots from the charity stripe but South Alabama grabbed its first lead of the night the very next trip down the floor when Monique Jones drained a trey from the left wing at the 3:10 mark. Over the next minute and a half, the two clubs traded baskets and with one minute, 29 seconds left on the clock, Nikya Hughes put UALR back on top with a three-pointer of her own. With time winding down and the Lady Jags down by three, Boswell drove full court and laid the ball off the glass with two seconds remaining to send the teams into the intermission with the Trojans leading 20-19.
In a low-scoring first half, Cooper recorded 13 of UALR’s 20 points, while Boswell was the offensive leader for the Jags with eight points.
As they have done the last three games, South Alabama rallied back in the second half. This time the charge was led by Whitney Woodard and Boswell. USA came out and regained the lead with 18 minutes, 45 seconds left in the second stanza with another Boswell bucket. Woodard then stretched the Jag advantage out to 27-22 over the next four minutes with three straight buckets of her own. UALR aided the Jaguar scoring spurt to open the second half, going scoreless until a Kim Sitzmann jumper with just over 15 minutes to go. The Lady Trojans kept it close and pulled within two (29-27) when Copper drained a three-pointer from the top of the key as the shot clock expired. Woodard and Boswell again had the answer for South Alabama as the duo sank back-to-back baskets to stretch the lead back out to six (33-27) with seven minutes, 43 seconds remaining. The margin hovered around that mark over the next few minutes until Cooper again pulled UALR to within two (37-35) at the 4:23 mark after hitting consecutive jumpers from the right baseline. The Trojans could draw no closer though and Woodard drained a trey from the top of the arc with just under three minutes left to give USA a 40-35 advantage. Raena Ellis stepped to the line in the final two minutes and calmly sank all four of her attempts from the charity stripe to seal the seven point victory for the Lady Jags.
Woodard and Boswell led USA on the night with 17 and 16 points, respectively. The duo combined for 21 of South Alabama’s 25 points in the second half and was a combined 15-of-17 from the field for the game.
“I couldn’t be more pleased with the play of our senior players Whitney Woodard and Valencia Boswell. Both really stepped up and made huge contributions for us,” said Pietri of Boswell and Woodard’s play. “Valencia was just making plays in succession and when she wasn’t, Whitney was doing it for us. Certainly you like to have some more balance, but tonight those two were making the plays and so we were going to milk them for as long as we could.”
Cooper led all scorers with 23 points on 10-of-13 shooting.
The combined 81 points by USA and UALR are the second lowest ever scored in the Mitchell Center by two teams. The total was just two points from the lowest combined total by two teams of 79 set back on Feb. 1, 2003 by the Jags (45) and Arkansas State (34).
