PENSACOLA, Fla. – The Old Dominion women’s basketball team lost a heartbreaker Friday evening in their opening game in the Sun Belt Conference Tournament, falling to ULM, 68-67, in the Pensacola Bay Center.
ODU had rallied from a 60-55 deficit and led, 67-66, on a free throw by En’Dya Buford with 27 seconds left.
But then ULM’s Marissa Gasaway made her first shot of the game after missing six in a row when she banked in an acrobatic eight-footer from the left baseline with seven seconds left.
Following an ODU timeout, Simaru Fields missed a jump shot and Kelsey Thompson was tied up while attempting a shot.
Fields and Buford both led ODU (18-14), the tournament’s sixth seed, with 14 points apiece while senior Simone Cunningham added 10.
As ODU Head Coach DeLisha Milton-Jones noted during post-game comments, the Monarchs lost to one of the Sun Belt’s hottest teams.
The Warhawks (17-15) fell to ODU, 85-62, on Jan. 28 in what was their sixth defeat in seven games and one of their worst of the season. But they have since gone on a hot streak, winning eight of their last 10 games.
ULM, the tournament’s tenth seed, takes on third-seeded Arkansas State on Saturday in the tournament quarterfinals.
“I felt like they were a team that was going to sneak up on some people in this tournament,” Milton-Jones said. “They play with a tenacious energy that’s collective.”
But, she added: “We did some things today to shoot ourselves in the foot. I’m not taking anything away from ULM. But I know my team and I know our talent and I know why some things today went their way and not ours.
“We’re a team that prides ourselves on defense and it really wasn’t there when we needed it the most.”
ODU prides itself on rebounding as well, but was outrebounded, 39-31, and outscored in the paint 36-28.
Perhaps showing the effects of having not played in a week, the Monarchs got off to slow start and trailed by five points, 22-17, three minutes into the second quarter.
But then they stepped up their defensive pressure, and that helped get their offense into gear. The Monarchs limited the Warhawks to four points in the last six minutes of the second quarter.
Riley Stack, who had eight points, and Cunningham both made short jump shots to begin a 17-6 run that allowed the Monarchs to take a 34-30 halftime lead.
ULM tied the score, 38-38, two minutes into the third quarter on a three-point play – a layup and foul shot – from Marcavia Shavers, the 6-foot-2 center who led the Warhawks with 26 points.
From there, it was a back-and-forth game.
Cunningham and Nevaeh Scott, who had nine points, made back-to-back jumpers to give the Monarchs a 46-40 lead.
The Warhawks then went on a 7-1 run that gave ULM a 47-46 lead with 1:15 left in the third quarter. Shavers made a layup with 17 seconds left to send the game into the fourth quarter tied at 49-49.
There were 10 lead changes and five ties in the fourth quarter.
Fields led a late ODU comeback with a spectacular offensive outburst when she made four three-point shots in a row in a two-minute stretch in which the Monarchs turned a 55-52 ULM lead into a 64-62 ODU advantage.
But in the end, it wasn’t quite enough.
Several ODU players were in tears following the loss.
“I am so proud of this team and everything that it accomplished,” Milton-Jones said. “Yes, it would have been nice to advance and to have an opportunity to play in the semifinals or finals. But it didn’t happen.
“But that doesn’t mean that I’m not proud of our work.”
She said her team went through a lot of adversity away from the court this season.
“We had a lot of tough moments this year that the public will never be aware of that would break the spine of a lot of other teams. And we were still able to pull out 18 wins,” she said.
“So, while we are suffering from defeat in this moment, I need for my players to understand of how proud of I am of them for how we represented and how we fought.”