SUNO Ends Lady Badgers Year in GCAC Tournament

The Spring Hill College Lady Badgers (7-22) ended the 2007-’08 season at home on Tuesday with a 77-74 loss to Southern University-New Orleans in the opening round of the GCAC Women’s Basketball tournament.

SUNO (7-20) opened the game with a 10-0 run and quickly built the lead out to 16 points at 25-9 before Spring Hill recovered enough to make a run of their own.  Spring Hill abandoned their outside game and changed to inside plays to junior All-GCAC forward Keisha Forbes and began to eat into the Lady Knights’ advantage.  A lay up by Rashonda Belton with three seconds before the half sliced SUNO’s lead to 35-32.

The Lady Badgers twice tied the game in the second half, first at 44-44 with 13:51 on the clock and again with just one minute remaining, but they could not find the right combination to take the lead as SUNO made its free throws down the stretch.

Forbes led all scorers with 27 points and both Belton and freshman Erica Wright scored 18 for SHC.  Forbes also collected 11 rebounds.  As a team, the Lady Badgers were out rebounded 50-40 and committed 19 turnovers to SUNO’s 17.  SHC shot 41% from the field (26-64) and made just four of 14 (29%) 3-point attempts.  At the charity stripe, SHC missed 11 free throws (13-24, 62%).

For SUNO, Brittany Williams scored 23 and her teammate center Disha Leonard dominated the glass taking in 18 rebounds and scoring 21 points.  Sherrie Vercise added 12 points for the Lady Knights.  SUNO shot 44% (30-68) from the field and 21% (4-19) from 3-point land.

SUNO now plays at Xavier in the GCAC Quarterfinals in New Orleans on Thursday at 7 p.m.