MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — The UALR women’s basketball team played good enough defense for 30 minutes to stay close with the Sun Belt Conference’s best team on Sunday. But the Trojans never mounted a serious offensive charge to keep it that way against Middle Tennessee in front of an announced crowd of 3,502 at the Murphy Center.
UALR shot just 30 percent from the field (18 of 60), missed its first eight three point attempts and its scoring in the post was almost doubled in Sunday’s 59-51 loss to the Blue Raiders, who won their 15th consecutive game and earned a share of the East Division title.
Under Coach Rick Insell, Middle Tennessee is 60-1 in home conference games.
“It was another tough Little Rock-Middle Tennessee game,” Insell said. “They played tough defense, we played pretty good defense, we got on the boards.
“They’ve got an athletic team, a young team, much like us. It’s a big win for us.”
The Trojans (13-12, 8-4) forced the Blue Raiders to struggle just as much as they did offensively in the first half.
Middle Tennessee made 8 of 28 shots in the first half and when the teams left the floor for halftime, the 25-25 tie was the first time all season the Blue Raiders didn’t hold a halftime lead at home.
The Blue Raiders (21-5, 13-0) took a 35-30 lead four minutes into the second half before a short spurt by UALR, capped by a Taylor Ford put back of a Janette Merriex miss that gave the Trojans a 37-36 lead with 12:45 left.
But Laken Leonard followed with a quick layup to give Middle Tennessee back the lead and after Kiera Clark missed a jumper for UALR, Ebony Rowe made a jumper to make it 40-37 and UALR never led again.
The Trojans twice got within two points after that, but they missed five of their final six shots over the last three minutes and the Blue Raiders shot 54 percent (12 of 22) in the second half.
Ford led UALR with 13 points and six rebounds, while Britteni Williams scored nine of her 11 points in the second half. Gault, UALR’s leading scorer at 16 points per game, had 10but struggled through 4 of 17 shooting.
Hannah Fohne, starting in the place of senior forward Marian Kursh for the second consecutive game, finished with 4 points and 8 rebounds in 32 minutes, while Kursh had 1 point and 4 rebounds in 14 minutes.
Rowe had 17 points and nine rebounds, while Icelyn Elie had 11 points and 16 rebounds and Kortni Jones had 12 points.
Most of the points from Rowe, Elie and Jones came inside as Middle Tennessee outscored UALR 30-16 inside in a game that saw 11 lead changes and eight ties.
Sports, Pages 13 on 02/13/2012