KATY — Just 24 hours after maybe their most impressive offensive displays of the season, the ACU Wildcats likely saw their season come to an end Friday afternoon with a loss in the quarterfinal round of the Southland Conference Tournament at the Merrell Center.
Central Arkansas — boasting the nation's second-best scoring defense, allowing just 50.1 points per game enter the contest — limited ACU to 32.6 percent shooting from the field in a 54-41 win that sends the Sugar Bears (22-8) into Saturday's semifinals against Stephen F. Austin. The loss probably ends the Wildcats' season at 16-14, although they will wait until early next week to see if that record is good enough to earn an invitation to a postseason tournament.
ACU put up 88 points and hit 50 percent of its shots — including 12 3-pointers — in Thursday's 88-66 demolition of New Orleans in the first round of the tournament. But the Wildcats were never able to get any kind of offensive rhythm against UCA, which beat ACU three times this season and has now won four straight over the Wildcats.
The Sugar Bears limited ACU to just four second-chance points, zero fast-break points, limited the Wildcats to just 3 of 13 shooting from 3-point range and forced 20 turnovers. And the 41 points marked the fourth time this season the Wildcats have been held below 50 points, including twice against the Sugar Bears and twice in their last three games. The 41 points are the fewest the Wildcats have scored since falling at Baylor, 79-34, on Dec. 1, 2016.
"Central Arkansas has a big, physical team, and they really prevented us from getting the open looks we got (against New Orleans)," said ACU head coach
Julie Goodenough, who is 121-58 in six seasons with the Wildcats, including 100-51 in five seasons at the NCAA Division I level. "You know going into a game against UCA that it's going to be physical. You have to take contact and be OK with it and hit open shots when they present themselves. We weren't strong with the ball (Friday) and we ran away from some of the contact and that hurt us in the long run."
ACU never led in the game and and trailed by nine at the half (28-19) before the Wildcats got back into the game in the third quarter behind
Breanna Wright, who finished with a team-high 19 points after going for 23 against New Orleans. Wright hit a layup to get her team to within 30-23 with 8:24 left in the quarter and then buried a 3-pointer to cut the UCA lead to 31-26 with 6:44 left in the third.
After a Kierra Jordan layup pushed the lead back to seven points,
Sara Williamson hit a layup to make it a 33-28 game with 4:28 left. But UCA outscored ACU 10-5 the rest of the quarter to take a 43-33 lead into the fourth quarter and the Wildcats never got closer than six points the rest of the way.
Williamson finished with 13 points and eight rebounds, while seniors
Sierra Allen (three points and two rebounds) and
Taudenciah Oluoch might have played their final games as Wildcats.
Despite the loss, the Wildcats finally got their chance to experience the Southland Conference Tournament after four years of transition from NCAA Division II to NCAA Division I affiliation, and it ended with a first-round win and a spot in the quarterfinals. Not bad for the nation's sixth-youngest squad that Friday afternoon started one freshman, two sophomores, one junior and one senior.
"I'm really proud of this team," Goodenough said. "It was an inexperienced group that learned a lot of lessons and really grew up during the course of the season. I'm proud that we were able to get to Katy and get our first conference tournament win. Hopefully this season and the experience of being in Katy will make us hungry for more this offseason."
