NATCHITOCHES—Northwestern State's cut a double digit deficit to five in the closing minutes, but its comeback attempt fell short as it fell to league-leading Southeastern Louisiana 59-51 on Saturday afternoon at Prather Coliseum.
A layup from freshman
Jermesha Frierson ended a 7-0 run to cut an NSU (9-14, 5-7) 50-38 deficit down to five, but SLU (15-8, 11-1) responded with six straight to push the Lions lead back to double figures.
The Lions made seven of their final eight free throws to salt away another defensive struggle between two of the conference's best defenses.
"Overall, the girls showed tremendous fight," fourth-year head coach
Anna Nimz said. "The game Thursday was a hard one to bounce back from. We didn't play with a lot of composure on either side of the ball. Moving forward to today, we lost the first quarter by five and we were right there outside of that.
"We keep telling them they are a really good ball club. We just have to believe in yourself, believe in this team and you have to have intense composure. The message in the locker room today is a lot different than the one on Thursday."
SLU helped itself immensely from the free throw line, going 17-of-19 to come out on top, despite shooting just 33.9 percent.
NSU stuck right with the conference leaders throughout the contest, leading 12-10 before SLU embarked on a 9-0 run to lead 19-14 at the end of the first.
Through the first 12 minutes of action, the Demons turned the ball over 11 times and since many were of the live ball variety, those were turned into 11 Lions points. It also aided SLU to shoot 47.1 percent in the opening quarter and held to 33.3 percent shooting or worse in each of the final three quarters.
"When you're tighter with the ball, you're giving yourself extra possessions," Nimz said. "A lot of their points in the first quarter were fast break points off our turnovers. If you were to take that away, it would have put us in a position.
"SLU had 13 points off turnovers in the first half and only 17 for the entire game, so that just shows you that we progressed throughout the game. We showed a lot of maturity down the stretch."
The NSU offense coughed it up only seven times in the final 28 minutes.
When the defense was putting the clamps on the SLU attack, the Lions defense was doing the same to the Demons, as the teams each shot below 30 percent in the second quarter, both scoring eight points to keep the Lions in front by five at halftime.
SLU tried to distance itself in the second half, but the Demons kept it close throughout.
With the Lions jumping out to a 41-31 advantage, a triple from
Sharna Ayres and basket from
Karmelah Dean to cut it to 41-36 at the end of three.
Ayres finished with a double-double with 14 points and 10 rebounds for her third double-double of the season. After her career-high 22 points on Thursday, Dean followed it up with 13 points and a game-high five assists.
Dean scored the first bucket of the final period to cut the deficit to three, but SLU responded with nine straight to push the lead to a game-high 12, which set the stage for the final minutes.
NSU out-rebounded SLU 42-35, which is the seventh straight game it has won the rebounding battle.
Starting her first career game, Freierson grabbed nine to go along with four points.
Of the 59 points, 42 came in the paint for the Lions.
Allasia Washington led the Lions with 14 points. Hailey Giaratano chipped in with 12 and Jalencia Pierre dropped in 11.
Cheyanne Davis hauled down a game-high 12 rebounds for SLU.
NSU hits the road for three consecutive matches, beginning Thursday at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. The next time the Demons are back at home is Feb. 29 against Nicholls.
