Box Score NATCHITOCHES – Trudy Armstead scored a career-high 30 points and Jordi James added 26 to help lead Northwestern State to an 86-70 win over Texas-Arlington in Southland Conference women's basketball action Saturday afternoon.
 
The win snapped a nine-game losing streak for the Lady Demons as they improve to 6-21 overall and 2-12 in conference play.  UTA, who still had an outside chance of earning a spot in the league's postseason tournament, fell to 6-20 and 4-10 and have been eliminated from postseason contention.
 
“I told the girls that I'm more proud of them for the way they came out and played hard knowing we had no chance of going to the tournament,” said Lady Demon head coach Jennifer Graf.  “UTA was still playing for a spot and we knew they would come in and try to put it to us.
 
“I thought Bob (assistant coach Bob Austin) did a really good job with this scout.  We knew we were out of the tournament so he went in and told the girls to play their hearts out, that we have nothing to lose.  I thought we played really well, especially on defense where we did a nice job of getting into passing lanes and creating some turnovers.”
 
Armstead, who knocked down 11 of 19 from the floor, inched closer to becoming the program's 24^th player with 1,000 career points scored and will enter Wednesday's game at Nicholls State with 980.
 
“Trudy has been that wildcard player all season,” said Graf.  “She gives it her all day in and day out but there are some of those games where her scoring doesn't show up.  It's almost like when she does score a lot, like today, it comes very quietly.”
 
Armstead also pulled down 11 rebounds and had two steals before she fouled out with 20 seconds to play in the game.
 
Both Armstead and James each had 18 points at the half to lead NSU to a 45-35 lead.  James hit four of her first five three-pointers in the contest and finished the game 5 of 7 from long range, tying a career-high in treys made.
 
NSU also got 10 points from Meredith Graf who sank 2 of 4 from long range.  For the game, the Lady Demons knocked down 7 of 15 from 3-point range while UTA connected on 3 of 10.
 
The Lady Demons dished out 21 assists, one shy of their season high, as they connected on 30 of 56 from the field for 53.6 percent – second highest mark of the season.
 
UTA led for the first 10 minutes of the first half and had as much as an 11-4 lead followed seven straight points after the Lady Demons tied the game at 4-4 early on.
 
NSU came back with a 3-pointer by James and back-to-back layups from Armstead to tie the game at 11-11 with 13:17 to play in the half.  But the Mavericks scored eight of the next 11 points to build a 19-14 lead with 11:15 to go until NSU rolled off a 25-4 run over the next five minutes to take a 29-23 lead at the 6:23 mark.
 
UTA got a layup from Bianca Sauls to cut the Lady Demon lead to 32-27 with 4:24 to go but Armstead scored the game's next four points followed by two free throws by James to give NSU its largest lead so far at 38-27 with 3:25 to play in the half.
 
Both teams traded points early in the second half until the Lady Demons opened up a 7-point lead with an 11-0 run to go up 65-47 with 9:22 to play behind five made free throws and another four points off of turnovers.
 
And when the Mavs built some momentum and got the deficit down to 13 points with 6:48 to play, Graf quickly closed the door on it after she knocked down back-to-back 3-pointers in a 29 second span to help spark a 8-0 run and give NSU a comfortable 79-58 lead with 4:46 to play.
 
Sabreena DeNure led UTA with 20 points as the Lady Mavs hit 27 of 66 for 41 percent from the field.
 
Next up, the Lady Demons will play their final road game of the season when they visit Nicholls State on Wednesday.