Sports

LADY LIONS RUN OUT OF GAS AT ASU

By Troy Schulte/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Thursday, November 19, 2009 12:11 AM CST

JONESBORO — In just his third game as coach, Cary Shelton still doesn’t know all that he would like about his Arkansas-Pine Bluff women’s basketball team. With 11 first-year players and a first-year head coach, it might take awhile before that happens.

But for most of Wednesday night, Shelton had to like what he saw from his inexperienced team. The Lady Lions constantly pestered Arkansas State with pressure defense to help hold the Red Wolves to just 28 percent shooting and led for much of the game at the ASU Convocation Center.

UAPB, coming off back-to-back 40-plus point defeats, held an 11-point lead in the first half and an eight-point lead in the second before strings of cold shooting — twice the Lady Lions went more than six minutes without a basket — and eventual tired legs took over in a 72-58 defeat.

“We just got away from being aggressive,” Shelton said. “We just played into (ASU) coach (Brian) Boyer’s game. He slowed the game up and I just applaud him for it.”

With a roster full of athletic guards with quick hands, Shelton’s plan this season is to pressure teams from the opening tip to the final whistle. Or, at least, do that as much as possible.

Boyer called Shelton’s team the most athletic UAPB team he has seen in his 11 years as coach, and complimented their intensity.

With his own team playing its third game in six days, including an 80-79 overtime win at Kansas State on Monday, Boyer wasn’t at all surprised the Lady Lions came out with an edge in aggression.

Chi Chi Okwumabua’s basket just more than two minutes into the game gave UAPB (0-3) a 2-0 lead and it eventually extended that to 15-4 with 13:02 left in the first half. During that stretch, ASU (2-1) made just 2 of its 13 shots from the field and it missed its first eight, including four layups.

“Athletically, they really get up and down the court,” Boyer said. “They’re just fearless attacking the basket. Those are all things we talked about, we just didn’t take it away from them.”

UAPB held the Red Wolves to 17 percent shooting in the first half and, after falling behind 19-17 with just over six minutes left, the Lady Lions went into halftime with a 28-25 lead.

They came out the second half with an upswing in momentum, too. After a Lyndsay Schlup basket got ASU to within 28-27, the Lady Lions scored the game’s next nine points. Those came on a jumper from LaQuisha Slaton, a 3-pointer in the corner from Amanda Hammond, a jumper off a steal from Slaton, and back-to-back baskets from Shay Holmes to make it 37-29.

A 12-4 run by the Red Wolves tied the game at 41, and a Jasmine Abrams basket for UAPB made it 43-41 with 12 minutes left. But that was the last UAPB field goal until a Holmes layup with 6:57 left.

At that point, the Lady Lions’ deficit was only 51-47, but the Red Wolves had finally started to see their shots fall and had finally gotten used to UAPB’s press, the likes of which they had not seen in their previous two games.

“We lost our tempo and our pace and we got a little tired,” said Rekevia Brown, who had nine points and 10 rebounds. “Shots weren’t falling.”

It wasn’t so much the shots not falling that hurt the Lady Lions — they shot 35 percent to ASU’s 28 — but it was their inability to get second chances or end the Red Wolves’ possessions after their misses.

ASU held a 71-45 rebounding advantage, four off the school record, which included 34 offensive rebounds. The Red Wolves had four players with at least 10 boards, another with nine, one with eight and one with seven. Sherina Scott led them with 10 points and 12 rebounds, Schlup had 16 points and 10 rebounds and Ebonie Jefferson had 19 points and nine rebounds.

Free throws helped ASU, too. The Red Wolves made 13 of 18 in the final seven minutes to pull away from the four-point lead, and UAPB made just 1 of 6 in the same span.

Holmes led the Lady Lions with 16 points and five rebounds while Jasmine Abrams came off the bench to score 13 points and have 11 rebounds.

Shelton, who spent the 2004-2005 season as a student assistant under Boyer, called the experience “special,” but afterward was ready to continue through his difficult nonconference schedule. The Lady Lions play at Mississippi on Friday and at Texas Tech on Sunday.

“I told the girls (have a) short memory,” Shelton said. “(We’re) just trying to get (a win). Well, just trying to compete, get us as close as we can until conference so we can try to win it.”

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