Louisiana-Monroe’s Shooting Too Much for Lady Eagles

ULM’s torrent shooting proved to be too much for Southern Miss.

The Southern Miss Lady Eagles fell to the ULM Lady Warhawks on Thursday night at Reed Green Coliseum. / @SouthernMissWBB on X

The Southern Miss Lady Eagles dropped one at home to the University of Louisiana-Monroe on Thursday night, falling 85–62. With the loss, the Lady Eagles move to 12–13 (5–8) and slide to 9th in the Sun Belt standings, while ULM improves to 13–12 (6–8) and jumps up to 8th.

Coming into this matchup, both teams sat at 12–12 overall, with Southern Miss holding a slight edge due to having home-court advantage. By the end of the night, that flipped.

To start the game, Southern Miss looked like the better team. The Lady Eagles jumped out to a 10–2 lead, with Meloney Thames knocking down a triple to ignite the early run. Whitney Hart was a force early as well, dropping 9 first-quarter points and doing real work on the block. But ULM responded late in the quarter and grabbed the lead on a Jazmine Jackson 3-pointer with 34 seconds left.

Earlier in that same quarter, Thames went down with an ankle injury. She did return, but it was clear she was not moving the same after that.

The second quarter is where things got away from Southern Miss. ULM opened with an and-1, a 3-pointer, two free throws, and back-to-back buckets, forcing Lady Eagles head coach Missy Bilderback to call timeout with 6:49 left in the half with her squad trailing 32–20. From there, it did not get much better. ULM closed the half on a 21–11 stretch and took a commanding 53–31 lead into the break.

In the second half, the Eagles competed much better, but spotting a team a 21-point halftime lead is a tough hill to climb. To their credit, they trimmed the deficit from 28 down to 18 with just over six minutes left after buckets from Thames and Carly Keats. The problem was they could not stack enough stops defensively, so every bit of offensive momentum was staunched on the other end.

What Went Wrong

First off, ULM was absolutely sizzling offensively and deserves full credit for it. They shot 50 percent from the field and went 10-for-21 from deep, which is nearly 50 percent from deep. When a team is shooting it like that, it’s hard to stay in the game, much less control it. The Lady Warhawks also got into the paint whenever they wanted and created high-percentage looks all night. Southern Miss tried going zone to stop the bleeding, but even then, ULM kept finding open looks all over the floor.

ULM also owned the glass, out-rebounding Southern Miss 47–29, including 15 offensive boards that led to second-chance opportunities. Against a team already shooting that efficiently, that is a recipe for disaster. Turnovers were nearly even (ULM 14, USM 12), but the assist numbers were not, as ULM finished with 16 to Southern Miss’ 8.

Southern Miss will look to bounce back Saturday at home at 5 p.m. when they host Texas State. It will be Senior Day for the Lady Eagles.

feed