By COLIN DAMMS
[email protected]
TUPELO — Mississippi State women’s basketball picked up its 10th win of the season in a nail-biting 73-70 contest against Belmont at Cadence Bank Arena in Tupelo on Saturday.
Head coach Sam Purcell’s team trailed for most of the game before taking a late lead and wrestling the Bruins to the final whistle.
Belmont made it 70-70 with just three seconds to go, but a foul sent Destiney McPhaul to the free-throw line just before the buzzer. She hit all three and spared the Bulldogs the grind of overtime against a tough Bruins team.
“It was a big moment,” McPhaul said after the game. “I feel like anybody on the team could have stepped up and made throws free throws, it was just my time today.”
Purcell noted that sometimes it comes down to luck in a gritty game, and while Belmont head coach Bart Brooks disagreed with the call, it was in line with how the final moments were officiated.
“Sometimes you need a little luck, and it wasn’t so much the call to me because the last two minutes it was happening that way,” he said. “We were up six, they drive down and jump in a body, they call foul. They were making the calls if you were near the body.”
It was a bitter end for a Belmont team that successfully frustrated the Bulldogs for three quarters.
The Bulldogs were slow out of the gate as Belmont took a 19-9 lead after one quarter, and closing the gap over the rest of the game proved a difficult task. They shot just 10-32 in the first half and problems turning the ball over continued to pop up.
The Bruins’ hot shooting from three helped establish an early lead and they registered eight steals as the Bulldogs committed 19 turnovers.
It was an uphill battle for MSU, but JerKaila Jordan’s fourth consecutive 20-point game helped ignite a comeback. She and Madina Okot both registered double-doubles and McPhaul added another 13 points off the bench as the Bulldogs responded to their coach’s message and overcame the early hurdles to get the win.
“Honestly, just not to give up,” she said of the message going into the fourth quarter. “We’ve been in that position before and came up with it. As long as we stayed together as one, made sure our defense was all together, and our defense turned into offense. Momentum came to our side.”
Purcell called the win an “NCAA Tournament game” when discussing the contest, crediting his team’s fight back against a team that has played against four ranked opponents already. He donned a pair of Elvis Presley sunglasses at the podium, celebrating the city as well as the win as he reflected on a quality win for his team.
“They play the seventh toughest schedule in the country,” he said of Belmont. “We have nothing but respect for them, so for us to find a way this is a huge win and I’ll be at church tomorrow.”
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