McNeese Women's Basketball suffers 76-52 loss at UCA in regular season finale

Staff Reports

The Contraband

McNeese women’s basketball suffered a 76-52 loss at Central Arkansas in its regular season finale Saturday. The Cowgirls will be the fourth seed in next week’s Southland Conference Tournament. The full tournament bracket will be released later today following all games played.

McNeese (19-11, 11-7 SLC) got into early foul trouble including two fouls on the Cowgirls’ leading rebounder Frederica Haywood. Along with the foul trouble, McNeese never got into an offensive rhythm as leading scorers Jayln Johnson and Allison Baggett were held to a combined 17 points in the game. Haywood was the only Cowgirl to score in double figures with 12 points and played with four fouls for most of the second half.

UCA jumped out to an 8-2 lead and never looked back as the Sugar Bears held a 10-point lead (25-15) after the first quarter. The Cowgirls opened the second quarter with an 8-3 run to cut the UCA lead to five points but UA went on a run of their own to take a double digit lead with 4:19 left in the second quarter. From this point on UCA never relinquished their double figure lead and held as much as a 30-point lead with four minutes to play. UCA held a 45-29 halftime lead.

While the Cowgirls were having their problems on offense, UCA was pretty much doing whatever they wanted on offense. The Sugar Bears ended the game shooting 54.2 percent from the field and 73.3 from the free throw line, connecting on 22 of 30 freebies.

McNeese ended the game shooting 43.3 percent from the field and when they did go to the free throw line, the Cowgirls uncharacteristically had an off day, making just five of their 16 attempts.