NEW ORLEANS -- Finally back on the floor following a first half wrecked by foul trouble, Victoria Rachal swished a 3-pointer from the left wing to open the third quarter. Now within four points of homestanding Tulane, the McNeese State bench erupted. It was the closest the Cowgirls crept since early in the first quarter.
Methodically, Tulane brought the basketball up the floor, rifling the basketball through the Cowgirls’ full-court press. Once in the halfcourt, McNeese failed to rotate and close out on a defensive set. Kolby Morgan stood open in the corner near her team’s bench.
She drained the 3-pointer, her third of the night. It began a 9-0 run that separated the Green Wave from their cold-shooting, pesky Lake Charles visitors in an 82-65 win Tuesday night — McNeese’s first road game under coach Kacie Cryer.
“We were right there,” Cryer said of that sequence. “Just have to go all the way out on a player like Kolby Morgan. She’s a very good player, big for them, hit a big shot because we left her open. It’s the little things, and I think that’s what lost us the game today. The little things, offensively and defensively.”
The Cowgirls, who entered the proceedings averaging a conference-high 81 points per game, shot a season-low 34 percent and made only seven of 29 3-point attempts. A matchup between the Southland’s leader in field goal percentage defense and the NCAA’s top field goal also percentage team had a decisive winner — the Green Wave shot 55 percent.
Morgan, the sister of former LSU player and current Tulane senior Malik Morgan, scored a game-high 26 on 10-of-15 shooting. After Rachal’s trey to open the third quarter, McNeese never crept closer than nine, allowing 50 points in the paint and committing 20 turnovers against a scheme for which it wasn’t originally prepared.
“They had to change it up on us and run a halfcourt trap on us that they haven’t run all year,” Cryer said. “We adjusted … but we turned it over. Kudos to them for coming out and doing that, that messed us up a little bit.”
The trap slowed McNeese’s want to speed in transition, forcing it to settle into halfcourt sets — where it is notably weaker.
Though the Cowgirls outrebounded the Wave, 47-35, they allowed eight second chance points in a first quarter that ended with them trailing by that same margin.
Mercedes Rogers, the team’s leading rebounder at 10.2 per game, played three first-half minutes due to foul trouble and mustered just three points and five boards. It left Frederica Haywood and Jasmyn Carswell the task of contending with 6-foot-2 Wave center Harlyn Wyatt.
“We were told that we could rebound and they couldn’t box us out,” Carswell said. “So that was the real goal, get to the hoop, rebound and go back up strong.”
Haywood and fellow forward Jasmyn Carswell paced McNeese offensively in the first half, scoring eight apiece.
Rachal played just 10 first-half minutes, another victim of a physical basketball game where 28 fouls were whistled in the first 20 minutes. She picked up her third with just more than four minutes left in the first half and her team trailing by eight.
In her absence, Dede Sheppard poured in 15 points — one of four Cowgirls in double figures — for her third straight game in double figures off the bench.
“I like it, I get to see the flow of the game, how the game is going and where I can fit in at,” Sheppard said. “Try to bring whatever type of energy is needed at the moment.”
Carswell had 12 and Haywood had a double-double of 10 points and 11 rebounds.
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