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MOREHEAD, Ky. – The Morehead State women’s basketball team could not overcome a sluggish shooting night, falling 81-61 to UT Martin on Monday night at Johnson Arena.
MSU fell to 7-12 and 4-3 in the Ohio Valley Conference, while UT Martin improved to 11-8 and moved within one game of first place at 5-1 in the league. The Eagles had trouble from long distance, shooting just 2-of-28 from three-point range.
“It’s going to be tough on us when we shoot the ball like that,” said MSU Head Coach Tom Hodges. “Courtney (Lumpkin) and Linda (Dixon) had a tough night from the field, from outside, and then to try to counter that they had to start driving the ball and trying to get inside. But, they could just never get into a rhythm offensively.”
The Skyhawks were paced by Jasmine Newsome, pouring in a game-high 29 points to go along with seven rebounds and four assists. OVC leading scorer Heather Butler added 16 points and four assists and scored her 1,000th career point in the process.
MSU tied the Skyhawks on the boards at 44-44 and held the league’s top three-point shooting team to just a quartet of treys. But, MSU also committed 18 turnovers and allowed UTM to outscore it 48-30 in the paint.
“You know they were 4-for-15 from three, and if you told me that before the game, I would have felt pretty good,” said Hodges. “But we didn’t contain Newsome, and every time we tried to make a run we never could over the hump. Hats off to UT Martin; they have a really good basketball team.”
MSU junior forward Ashar Harris, who entered the day ranked first in the nation in rebounding, tallied her ninth double-double with 19 points and 18 boards. She also became just the fifth player in school history to eclipse 900 career rebounds, upping her total to 910.
Lumpkin poured in a team-high 22 points and five rebounds, hitting 11-of-12 free throws, while senior guard Linda Dixon added nine points, nine rebounds, a career-best six blocks, two assists and two steals. Freshman guard Almesha Jones scored a career-high 11 points, her first career double-digit scoring effort.
Lumpkin moved into second place in career assists at MSU with two tonight and now 457 for her career.
For the game, MSU was limited to 30 percent shooting (21-of-68), while UTM shot 44 percent on 31-of-70 shooting, including a 50-percent mark in the second half (20-of-40).
After a slow start to the game, the Eagles used an 8-2 to run to take their only lead of the game at 10-7. UT Martin utilized a 9-0 run midway through the half to take control of the game at 26-17. The Skyhawks capitalized on 10 first-half Eagle miscues to hold an 11-point lead at halftime, 35-24.
In the second period, MSU trimmed the Skyhawk lead down to 51-37 following a Lumpkin triple at the 13:27 mark, but UTM went on a 13-4 scoring romp to take its largest lead of the night at 64-41 with 9:24 remaining.
Morehead State has a one-week hiatus from games before returning next Monday, Jan. 30 to host Tennessee Tech at 6 p.m. ET in Johnson Arena.
