TicketsStephens' Career Game Ends Bearcat Slide
Contact: Geoff Wiswell
1/30/2005
Anne Stephens scored a career-high 24 points. |
MEMPHIS, Tenn. ? Anne Stephens? career-high 24 points, including the winning basket with 10 seconds left, led Cincinnati to a 58-56 win at Memphis on Sunday afternoon.
The win snapped a nine-game losing streak for the Bearcats, who picked up their first league win of the year. They are now 6-14 and 1-6 in Conference USA. Memphis fell to 10-11 and 3-5 in conference play.
?We were more fundamental today,? said head coach Laurie Pirtle. ?We supported each other when we got down. I think we needed a win at the end like this to teach us how to win and how to play to win.?
Despite going over 12 minutes between field goals in the second half, UC stayed in the game with tough defense and getting to the line. A Tamika Butler jumper extended UM?s lead to seven, 48-41, at the 9:28 mark.
Memphis still led by seven when Stephens scored four-straight points to close the gap to 51-49 with 4:45 to go.
UM led by three when Victoria Crawford, who scored a game-high 28, missed the front end of a one-and-one with 1:39 left. Stephens scored for UC on the next possession and, after a defensive stop, Micah Harvey made two foul shots with 44 seconds to go to give the Bearcats at 55-54 lead.
Crawford responded with a lay-up and got fouled with 31 seconds left, but missed the free throw, allowing a Stephens putback with 10 seconds left to give the Bearcats a 57-56 lead.
Memphis missed a driving lay-up with two seconds left and Stephens got the rebound and made one-of-two free throws after being fouled. The Lady Tigers made just 9-of-17 from the charity stripe.
Stephens, who made 10-of-14 field goal attempts, added a game-high nine rebounds as UC held a 40-28 advantage on the boards. Harvey and Karen Twehues each added 11 points and Toni Slaughter had four assists and seven rebounds.
Memphis ran out to a 9-2 lead in the first three minutes, with Jennifer Sullivan scoring four of the nine.
After a Laurie Pirtle timeout, the Bearcats responded by scoring the next eight points and 13 of the next 15. Stephens scored six straight UC points in the run that gave the Bearcats a 15-11 lead with 10:46 to go. A minute later Bellva May, making her first career start, gave UC its largest lead of the half at 19-13 with a steal and lay-in.
After being held to two baskets over a nine-minute stretch, the Memphis offense began to wake up, led by Victoria Crawford. She scored 14 of the Lady Tigers? final 18 points of the half.
Crawford capped a 5-0 run that pulled UM to 19-18 with 7:27 to go and she answered a Karen Twehues three-pointer with a three-point play.
Sullivan made an open jumper with 1:53 left in the half to regain the lead for Memphis, 27-26, but Treasure Humphries made a jumper with 1:32 to go and Micah Harvey scored on a driving lay-up with two seconds left in the half to give UC a 30-27 lead going into the break.
Stephens shot 6-of-9 in the first half for 12 points and Toni Slaughter?s four boards led UC to a 21-14 rebounding edge.
Crawford had 17 points on 7-of-9 shooting. Both team shot over 40 percent and combined for just one three-pointer and seven free throw attempts.
A Twehues triple to open the half pushed the UC advantage to six, but the Lady Tigers scored nine of the next 11 points, the last five by Jessica Hall, to take a 38-35 lead with 15:05 to play.
UC returns home to face Marquette on Saturday, Feb. 5 at 2 p.m. in Fifth Third Arena.