TROY, Ala. ? South Alabama’s Shakira Nettles’s jumper with under a minute to play and Amanda Leonard’s two free throws in the final seconds proved to be the difference for the Lady Jags as USA captured a 69-66 Sun Belt Conference victory over Troy Sunday afternoon at Trojan Arena.
“Tonight was a great finish for us,” South Alabama head coach Rick Pietri said. “We knew that Troy had a lot of fight in them. The thing that I liked about our effort was that although they cut into the lead a couple of times, our team never shattered and was able to hold it together. We were able to make the plays at the end to win it.”
USA (16-8, 7-6 SBC) will continue its two-game road swing when the Lady Jags travel to Murfreesboro, Tenn., to take on Middle Tennessee on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. South Alabama maintains a tie for third place in the SBC East Division with the win. With the loss, Troy falls to 10-14 overall and 3-10 in league action.
Nettles led all scorers with a career-high 20 points for South Alabama, while Leonard, making her first start of the season, came up big in the second half with all 10 of her points in the final period. Kylie Morrissy led the Trojans with 19 points of her own in the loss.
The Lady Trojans entered the contest ranked eighth in the nation in three-point shooting, but like the earlier match up in Mobile, South Alabama held the Trojans to below 30 percent shooting from beyond the arc (28.6 percent).
With the two clubs tied early on at 8-8 with just under four minutes played in the contest, South Alabama raced back out to a 21-11 advantage, courtesy of a 13-3 run. Nettles got things going for the Lady Jags with a mid-range jumper at the 14:52 mark. USA then used the long range shot to push the lead out to double figures. During the run, Jessica Starling and Karina Sproal each connected from downtown. Troy’s Danielle Realph ended the Jaguar scoring spurt when the junior forward knocked down a trey from the right wing with just over 11 minutes left in the opening period.
South Alabama kept the margin in double figures for much of the remainder of the first stanza, leading by as much as 13 in the opening 20 minutes of play. However, with the Jags holding an 11 point lead at 35-24 with two minutes, 21 seconds left on the clock, Troy’s Morrissy ignited a 9-0 run to end the half for the Trojans. Amy Lewis capped cut the Trojan deficit to 35-33 at the intermission when she went to the charity stripe and hit both her free throw attempts with 0.8 seconds left on the clock.
With USA holding a five point lead two minutes into the second half, the Trojans battled back and claimed their first lead of the afternoon at 41-40 on a Raelph jumper with just under 17 minutes on the clock. Nettles came right back down the court on South Alabama’s next possession and drained a trey from the right wing to give USA the lead right back. Over the next several minutes the two clubs went back-and-forth, exchanging the lead five times. Brittney Rutledge’s bucket with 12 minutes, 28 seconds gave the Lady Jags the lead for good and two minutes later, South Alabama pushed the lead back out to 55-49 on a pair of Siedah Banks free throws at the 10:10 mark. USA later went back out in front by nine (62-53) when Banks grabbed an offensive rebound and laid the ball back in with seven minutes remaining in the game.
Like they had done earlier, the Lady Trojans would not quit and reeled off seven unanswered points of their own over the next two minutes and trimmed the deficit to 62-60 on a Laura Lee Holman jumper, but Jag senior Amanda Leonard drained her second three-pointer of the half with just over three minutes left to stretch the Jag advantage back out to five. Troy’s Morrissy brought the Trojans to within one (65-64) with two free throws of her own with a minute and a half remaining, but Nettles again came up clutch and with the shot clock winding down with under a minute to play sank a 10-foot jumper for USA. After Troy had again cut the lead to one with three seconds to go, Leonard calmly stepped to the free throw line and drained both her attempts to preserve the Jaguar victory.
