Saint Louis University women’s basketball coach Jill Pizzotti hopes last weekend’s games will be a springboard for the team’s upcoming contests in Conference USA.
Pizzotti said, “I hope we can put a run together. We have a few games at home now.”
The Bills split their games last weekend, losing to nationally-ranked Tulane 91-64 last Friday and defeating Southern Miss 64-57 on Sunday.
The Bills scored first against the Green Wave, as Mandy Lueking hit a three less than one minute into the game. The Bills stayed close through the first 10 minutes of the game. The Bills trailed by only 21-19 after a Christan Shelton jumper.
But Tulane went on a 35-10 run in the final eight minutes to lead at halftime 56-29. Even though SLU trailed at the half, they shot 59 percent from the field.
Even though the Billikens played Tulane evenly in the second half, they never got any closer than 27 points. Tough SLU defense held Tulane to 41 percent shooting in the second half.
Melissa Oliver led the Bills with a career-high 20 points and Shelton added 11. Oliver shot 10-10 from the field in the game. It marked a school and C-USA record for shooting accuracy.
“Tulane is an excellent ball club. They deserve their ranking. Their full court press was relentless. Forty minutes of it wore on us mentally,” Pizzotti said.
“Much of their offense came off their press. They had a lot of steals off the press,” she stated.
The Bills rebounded for a win over Southern Miss.
SLU jumped out to an 8-2 lead six minutes into the game. The Golden Eagles roared back with a 14-0 run to take a 16-8 lead with nine minutes left in the half.
The Bills cut the lead down to three with four points from Oliver and three from Beckmann. SLU took a 24-23 lead with 58 seconds left in the first half after a pair of Shelton free throws. Lueking added two more from the charity stripe and the Bills led 26-23 at halftime.
The Bills came out hot and pushed their lead to 37-23 four minutes into the second half. Lakia Jones scored five points and Shelton notched four during the run.
The Bills pushed the lead to 18 points two minutes later before the Golden Eagles tried to comeback.
Southern Miss cut the lead to five points twice, but the Bills squashed both runs. The Billikens lead grew to 58-50 with three minutes left. Southern Miss made one final run.
The Golden Eagles cut SLU’s lead to three points with 44 seconds left in the game. Jones blocked two Southern Miss three-point shots in the final seconds.
Lueking and Beckmann combined to score the final six points for the Bills from the free-throw line. The Bills prevailed 64-57.
“It was great to get a win. We need to finish close games,” Pizzotti stated.
The Bills play two conference foes next week. SLU faces Cincinnati Saturday at 2 p.m. and Louisville visits on Monday at 7 p.m.
“This is a big weekend for us. If we can get on a roll, we can do some damage,” Pizzotti said. “We’re lucky to be at home. I hope we have a lot of people there.
“We feel that we can compete with anybody in the conference. Nothing is out of reach.”
