Box Score NATCHITOCHES – A torrid first half turned into a tumultuous second half as Northwestern State blew a 13-point lead and fell 79-73 to Jackson State in women's basketball action on Friday night.
 
The loss was the fourth straight suffered by NSU (3-9) while Jackson State (3-6) picked up its third win of the season.
 
Northwestern cruised out to a 44-31 first half lead behind the sharp 3-point shooting of Meredith Graf who scored 12 of her game and career-high 19 points behind 4 of 5 aim from behind the 3-point arc.  As a team, the Lady Demons connected on 18 of 34 from the field for 52.9 percent, including 6 of 10 from long range, in the first half.
 
Jasmine Upchurch joined Graf to lead the Lady Demons with 19 points.  Trudy Armstead added 11 points with a game-high 13 rebounds and Jordi James scored 11 points to round out the double-figure scorers for NSU.
 
Jackson State's Tiffany Kellum led all scorers with 24 points while Rachel Jones tipped in 12 and Dominique Brothern 10.
 
In the second half, the Lady Tigers quickly turned their 13-point deficit into a one-point game just 4:30 into the half after a 12-2 run cut the Lady Demon lead to 46-45 with 15:30 to play.
 
NSU then got back-to-back free throws by James followed by an Upchurch layup to put the Lady Demons back up by five.  And after Graf sank consecutive free throws to put her team up 52-46 with 14:04 to play, the Lady Tigers got a 3-pointer and layup from Alisa Ross followed by another trey from Beatrice Banks to tied the game up at 54-all.
 
JSU took its first lead of the game after a jumper by Kiana McCarty put it up 56-54 and held a 59-55 lead after Kellum layup with 9:53 to play.
 
Graf then sank her fifth 3-point basket on the night to cut the gap to 59-58 with 8:04 to play and Upchurch tied the game at 63-63 after swishing the back end of two free throws with 5:08 to go.
 
From that point, JSU took advantage of NSU's miscues from the free throw line as the Lady Demons missed nine free throws down the stretch and finished the second half 10 of 22 after hitting their only two from the charity stripe in the first half.
 
After its pin-point shooting in the first half, the Lady Demons connected on just 9 of 26 for 34.6 percent in the second half and finished the game 27 of 60 for 45 percent. 
 
JSU was just the opposite.  The Lady Tigers connected on 13 of 34 for 38.2 percent in the first half but banged in 17 of 30 for 56.7 percent in the second.
 
The Lady Demons will get one more tune up game before starting Southland Conference play next Saturday when they host LSU-Shreveport on Monday with a 7 p.m. start time.