FAYETTEVILLE — The Auburn Tigers used a 30-point fourth quarter to turn a seven-point deficit into a 70-64 victory over the Arkansas Razorbacks on Sunday afternoon at Bud Walton Arena.
Arkansas (13-16, 2-14) led 47-40 after three quarters, but Auburn (17-13, 7-9) dominated the final period, handing the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville its 10th consecutive defeat.
The Razorbacks enter this week’s SEC Tournament in Greenville, S.C., as the No. 14 seed, and will play No. 11 seed Florida (14-15, 5-11) at 12:30 p.m. Central. The game will be televised on the SEC Network.
“We’ll go down there to Greenville, and fight as hard as we can,” Arkansas Coach Jimmy Dykes said. “We have to lead the league in number of losses by 5 or less or 10 or less. But we didn’t win them.”
Brandy Montgomery scored 18 to lead Auburn, with guards Janiah McKay and Katie Frerking scoring 17 and 16 points, respectively, to spoil Arkansas’ senior day in front of an announced crowd of 1,224.
Jessica Jackson and Devin Cosper led Arkansas with 14 points each. Jackson, a senior, scored 10 or more for the 16th consecutive game and for the 100th time in her Arkansas career. Arkansas’ other senior, Alecia Cooley, had 11 points and and 10 rebounds.
“It’s been a tough year, a hard year,” Dykes said. “There have been a lot of things we’ve had to work through, fight through. I’ve been so proud of how we have done that because this has been a challenging year in many, many ways.”
Auburn missed at least 10 consecutive shots on two occasions before the fourth quarter began. The Tigers missed 11 consecutive shots to begin the second quarter and 10 to open the second half.
Arkansas led by as many as seven with 4:50 to play in the third, but could not pull away.
Fortunes changed dramatically in the fourth quarter, when the Tigers hit their first 10 shots.
“At this point, in your last game of the regular season, you’ve just got to play as hard as you can,” Auburn Coach Terri Williams-Flournoy said. “We were struggling offensively, but thank goodness in the fourth quarter we found the basket.”
The Tigers shot 62.5 percent (10 of 16) in the fourth. The Razorbacks were 6 of 17 from the floor (35.3 percent) and 3 of 10 from 3-point range.
“A lot of them were the same shots,” Williams-Flournoy said of Auburn’s fourth-quarter shooting. “One thing we did do differently was when we turned them over we actually pushed and scored in transition. That’s our best offense. Our defense makes our offense.”
In other games involving ranked SEC teams, Jaime Nared scored a career-high 30 points, Diamond DeShields added 20 and Tennessee upset No. 3 Mississippi State 82-64. Tennessee (19-10, 10-6 SEC), which led for nearly the entire game, won on the road against a team ranked in the top three for the first time since 2004. Victoria Vivians scored 18 points and Roshunda Johnson (Little Rock Parkview) added 16 for Mississippi State (27-3, 13-3). … A’ja Wilson had 25 points and 10 rebounds, Kaela Davis added 20 points and No. 7 South Carolina earned its fourth consecutive SEC title with a 95-87 victory over No. 22 Kentucky. The Gamecocks (24-4, 14-2 SEC) locked up the No. 1 seed for next week’s SEC tournament. Taylor Murray scored 29 points for Kentucky (20-9, 11-5).
Sports on 02/27/2017