ABILENE – Five days after watching a second-half lead evaporate in a loss at Lamar, the ACU Wildcats watched the same thing happen Thursday night at Moody Coliseum.
Lamar erased an 11-point halftime deficit at Moody Coliseum to grab a 73-58 win over the Wildcats in a Southland Conference women's basketball game. The loss drops the Wildcats to 11-10 overall and 3-7 in the Southland, while the first-place Lady Cardinals improve to 12-10 and 9-2.
ACU is back in action Saturday at 2 p.m. when it hosts Southeastern Louisiana in the first game of a Southland Conference doubleheader. The men's game will follow 30 minutes after the completion of the women's game.
Last Saturday at the Montagne Center in Beaumont, ACU saw a nine-point second-half lead evaporate under the weight of a 20-2 Lamar run on its way to a 76-72 loss to the Lady Cardinals. Thursday night the Wildcats lost an 11-point halftime lead as Lamar dominated the second half, holding ACU to just five field field goals, 18 points and no field goals in the final 12:27 of the game.
The Wildcats led 40-29 at halftime, thanks to a stellar defensive effort against one of the league's top scoring offenses and an offense that hit timely baskets and shot 36.8 percent from the 3-point line (7 for 19).
But that all disappeared in the second half as Lamar guard JaMeisha Edwards completely took over the game, as did Lamar's defense. Edwards – who poured in 18 points last Saturday in Lamar's win – scored a career-high 29 points Thursday night, including 22 in the second half. She hit 7 of 13 shots in the game's final 20 minutes and ran the Lady Cardinals' offense to perfection.
Meanwhile, the Wildcats went into an offensive funk, hitting just 5 of 25 shots from the field in the second half (20 percent), including 2 of 15 from 3-point range (13.3 percent). ACU's lead was 52-46 with 12:27 left when
Lizzy Dimba hit a field goal, and that would be the final time the Wildcats scored from the field the rest of the night.
ACU was 0 for 13 from the field in the final 9:47 of the game as the Lady Cardinals took over. Lamar took its first lead of the second half with 9:11 to play on a 3-pointer by Addesha Collins, giving her team a 54-53 lead. The Lady Cardinals never looked back as they steamrolled to their second win over the Wildcats in the last five days.
After shooting just 28.1 percent in the first half (9 for 32), Lamar shot 53.1 percent in the second half (17 of 32), including 46.2 percent from the 3-point line (6 of 13). Another big difference came at the free throw line where, for the second straight game against ACU, Lamar was perfect from the stripe, going 12 for 12 Thursday night after going 15 for 15 last Saturday.
ACU, meanwhile, struggled from the line as five players combined to hit just 15 of 27 free throws (55.6 percent) just five days after the Wildcats were 12 for 12 against Lamar in the four-point loss.
"We just didn't have the defensive intensity in the second half like we did in the first half," ACU head coach
Julie Goodenough said. "Against a really good offensive team like Lamar, you can't have defensive breakdowns, and that's what we had the entire second half. Then I think we just got so deflated by our defensive effort that we couldn't sustain anything offensively. We did a really good job in the first half of going inside to our posts and either hitting shots or drawing fouls, but in the second half we settled for a lot of jump shots instead of working the ball inside."
Suzzy Dimba had 10 points and tied her career high with 16 rebounds as she recorded the eighth double-double of the season and 19th of her career.
Lizzy Dimba had eight points and 10 rebounds, while
Alexis Mason led the Wildcats with 13 points.
Sydney Shelstead had eight points and six rebounds off the bench.
