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Southwest Mississippi Community College

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Lady Bears Northwest

Women's Basketball Michael D. Gunnell, Southwest Sports Information

Lady Bears surrender first half lead, fall to Lady Rangers

As head coach Brent Harris put it, "it was a tale of two halves" for the Southwest Lady Bears Monday night as they opened the basketball season with a 73-62 loss on the road at Northwest Mississippi. The Lady Bears built a 13-point lead in the first half only to see it disappear in the second.
 
The first half was almost all Southwest. An April Levy layup gave the Lady Bears a 2-0 lead early in the half. Northwest then tied the game on Brittani Biggins' basket and took a 4-2 lead on Kristina May's jumper with 17:45 left in the half. Another Levy layup, and a Talisa Sherman three-pointer, served as bookends of a 26-11 run that saw the Lady Bears go up 26-15 with 3:33 on the clock.
 
That apparently lit a fire in the Lady Rangers as they went on a run of their own, 17-5, to close the half. A Carshava Sutton bucket with 0:01 on the clock capped the run and drew the hosts to within one point, 33-32, at the end of the first 20:00 of play.
 
The second half belonged to the Lady Rangers. Outscoring Southwest 16-7 to open the final stanza, Northwest took a 50-40 lead on Sutton's basket with 9:59 left to play. A Katrina Littlepage layup shortened the Lady Bears' deficit to four, 50-46, with 9:04 to go in the game, but that was as close as they could get the rest of the way. Young hit a shot to give the Lady Rangers a 69-51 lead with 2:58 on the clock and they coasted to the 11-point victory.
 
"That last three minutes of the first half kind of set the momentum for the second half," said Harris. The second-year coach said the Lady Bears were hurt by turnovers and fouls and that the "fouling bothered me more than the turnovers because (with) the way Northwest plays, you're going to turn the ball over. Us playing defense with our feet instead of our hands, that bothers me. We kind of lost our mojo there for a minute, got down and couldn't get it put back together. Hopefully we can turn it around on Thursday.
 
Despite the loss, Harris said he did see some positives in the game. "We had some freshmen play a lot of good minutes. I thought Dimaya McCullough did pretty well. I thought Talisa Sherman didn't have many negative plays. That may be the end of the positives. We played pretty hard, but didn't always play pretty smart."
 
Levy led the Lady Bears with 12 points in the game. Madison Mault was also in double figures with 11 points. Sherman picked up nine points while Cortney Epting and McCullough both tallied seven.
 
Littlepage recorded six points while Tee Myers had five, Raven Reyes had three (and eight rebounds) and Elayne Robinson had two. The Lady Bears made 18 of 30 free throws.
 
Northwest's Sutton led all scorers with 24 points. Young and Mays were also in double figures with 14 and 12 points, respectively. The Lady Rangers made good on 16 of 29 charity shots.
 
The Lady Bears make their home debut Thursday night when they host Bishop State (Mobile, AL). Tipoff is set for 5:30.
 
Box Score---

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