Women’s Basketball: UL women fail to deliver encore performance in loss to Coastal

Kevin Foote, The  Advertiser, Feb. 2, 2019

Perhaps it was playing a third game.

Perhaps it was just not being able to follow up on their best performance of the season in beating Appalachian State, 73-55, on Thursday.

Or perhaps it was just the normal ups and downs of a young basketball team.

Whichever angle makes the most sense, the bottom line was UL coach Garry Brodhead’s Ragin’ Cajuns weren’t able to come close to an encore performance in falling, 76-58, to Coastal Carolina on Saturday in the Cajundome.

“You try to figure out why you didn’t play well,” Brodhead said. “I think we just didn’t shoot the ball well. We were rushed a little bit, and their defense probably did that to us.”

The big difference came in the third quarter.

On Thursday, the Mountaineers made just one of 12 shots from the field. On Saturday, Coastal made 11 of 16 to blow the game wide open.

“I think it was us, too,” Brodhead said. “Sometimes when we play from behind, we play too fast. It ended up leading to a lot of our missed shots ended up being layups, because they’re so good at offensive transition.”

The result was a 10-point deficit in the transition game and a 12-point deficit in the paint.

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“We didn’t defend them as well, but a lot of what we were doing in trying to trap created some open looks for them, and they just knocked them down,” Brodhead said.

Coastal (11-9, 3-6) also hurled a curve ball at the Cajuns (6-15, 4-6) with Aja Blount scoring 16 points on 7-of-11 shooting from the field.

“She was scoring four points a game and she hit some shots,” Brodhead said. “Some of the things we were trying to take away, we did a good job, but we also gave them some things that made it tough.”

The Cajuns, meanwhile, shot 32.3 percent from the field, including just 20 percent (4-20) from three-point land.

“We’ve got to shoot the ball a little bit better,” Brodhead said. “I don’t know if we were tired or what. We were also trying to manufacture some scores for certain people, and it just wasn’t there.”

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Diamond Morrison led the Cajuns with 12 points and three rebounds, but it was junior Kendall Bess with the most impressive effort with 11 points, seven boards and two steals.

Bess also excited Brodhead in the loss by diving on the floor after loose balls late with the game out of reach.

“That’s what we want,” he said.