The UALR women's basketball team spent the past five weeks blowing out Sun Belt Conference opponents.
UALR Coach Joe Foley never once thought about pulling back on the reins during a 9-0 start in conference play that helped the Trojans move to the top of the league standings and raised their RPI to No. 43 nationally, but he sensed a issue looming going into Thursday night's game at Arkansas State.
"That probably hurt us that we hadn't been playing many close games," said Foley, whose team had won 10 consecutive games going into its matchup against the Red Wolves. "But I'm not going to tell our kids not to score to try and make it a close game."
When UALR (16-3, 9-1) finally found itself in one again Thursday night, it faltered down the stretch. The 70-69 loss to ASU was only its second game decided by five points or less this season, and its first since a 66-62 victory over Oklahoma on Dec. 14.
Foley said he thinks a string of blowout victories -- the Trojans had won nine in a row by at least 20 points during its 10-game winning streak -- worked against his team in a loss that trimmed its conference lead to a half-game over ASU.
UALR will try to bounce back today when it plays at Georgia Southern (4-14, 1-8) at 3:30 p.m. Central in Statesboro, Ga.
"The more you win, the bigger you win, you kind of lose that edge," Foley said. "I think we've kind of lost that edge because of what we've been doing. It would have helped if we had been in some close games."
UALR did everything it could to make sure ASU didn't run away from it. The Red Wolves shot 56.3 percent against the Sun Belt's best defensive team and made 6 of 6 three-pointers. ASU led by as much as 27-18 in the first half and by as much as 59-50 with 8:10 left before UALR started to come back.
Taylor Gault's three-pointer in the final minute gave UALR a 69-68 lead, but in the final seconds Shanity James attempted a layup when Foley said she should have just held the ball and waited to get fouled. James' shot was no good and Jasmine Hunt grabbed the rebound, was fouled and made the two winning free throws for ASU with 5.0 seconds left.
"Nobody really did their part," James said of UALR's defense. "Collectively, defense was just bad as a whole."
Foley said he didn't think his team did anything out of character defensively and instead gave credit to an ASU team that is among the Sun Belt's best in scoring (71.5 points per game) and field-goal percentage (45.7).
He also said Thursday's loss could put at least a temporary halt to all the pats on the backs his team had been getting for the school's best overall start through 18 games. Foley noted that UALR is just now at the halfway mark of the Sun Belt season and has 10 games remaining , which includes a Feb. 19 rematch against ASU at the Jack Stephens Center in Little Rock.
"Like I kept telling everybody who was saying you're all doing this, you're all doing that. No, we're only halfway through," Foley said. "There's a lot of games that will happen. We just have to get ready to play the next one."
Sports on 01/31/2015