The women’s basketball team fell to USF and Temple in the last week and a half, and is now sitting at a 5–12 record halfway through the season.
The No. 22 Bulls outplayed the Golden Hurricane in the first two quarters of their game in Tampa, and while the Golden Hurricane forced early turnovers — and 14 total in the game — they couldn’t capitalize with points and trailed USF by 13 after the first half.
The Golden Hurricane kept pace with the Bulls in the second half, scoring 20 and 25 in third and fourth quarters respectively, but could not overcome the deficit from the first two quarters of play, and lost 84–68.
Kendrian Elliott led the scoring for Tulsa with 14 points, Ebony Parker and Shug Dickson both had 11 and Erika Wakefield scored 10. But this was not enough to stop the Bull’s top-two scorers, Kitija Laksa and Maria Jespersen, who had 37 and 20 points respectively.
Head Coach Matilda Mossman said after the game, “I thought our kids played hard. I thought we moved the ball well, took good shots and executed well, but unfortunately we couldn’t make shots and that hurt. Our kids did what we asked them to do and I’m proud of their effort.”
The poor shooting continued in Saturday’s loss against Temple. Early in the game, the Golden Hurricane only converted one of their 10 shots and only shot 36 percent for the entire game. The struggles in the early game again hurt Tulsa. Tulsa and Temple both scored 16 in the final frame, but the Golden Hurricane could not overcome their deficit from the first three quarters of play and fell 58–49.
Dickson was the highlight for Tulsa, scoring a career-high 21 points off the bench in the loss. Mossman said about her effort; “I thought Shug [Dickson] was really good at attacking, and that was the focus going into this game. We knew Temple was going to attack us so we couldn’t sit back on our heels, we had to go and attack back. I think for her coming in the 16th game of her career she was really good about attacking.”
The women’s next game will be against No. 1 UConn, who recently set the NCAA record for most consecutive wins (breaking their own previous record) with 91.
