Tulsa Women Fall to Little Rock 63-53

Monday, December 17

Reynolds Center

7:00 pm

Tulsa

5-6

Little Rock

3-6

Little Rock

Tulsa

Tulsa Women Fall to Little Rock 63-53

12/17/2018 9:16:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Box Score

Final Stats in PDF
Final Stats in HTML
Season Stats in PDF

TULSA, Okla. –– Little Rock (3-6) pulled away in the third quarter and went on for a 63-53 victory against the Tulsa Golden Hurricane (5-6) Monday night in front of a crowd of 863 fans at the Donald W. Reynolds Center.

Crystal Polk led the Hurricane with 14 points, while freshman Desiree Lewis had her first career double-digit scoring game with 12 points and Morgan Brady chipped in 10 points. Polk and Lewis shared the team-lead with six rebounds apiece.

Little Rock's Ronjanae DeGray came off the bench to score a game-high 19 points as the Trojans' reserves outscored the Tulsa bench by a margin of 35-9. Little Rock also had a 15-4 edge in second-chance points and scored 26 points off of Tulsa's 19 turnovers.

"It didn't feel like we could find five guys that could go out on the floor and play hard at the same time," said Tulsa head coach Matilda Mossman. "We were controlling things in the first half and did everything we wanted to do, but I'm not sure why we couldn't come out and do that in the second half."

The Trojans outscored the Hurricane 34-24 in the second 20 minutes after the two teams went into halftime tied at 29. Little Rock outdistanced Tulsa in the third quarter 23-11 to take a 52-40 lead at the end of the period.

Tulsa began the third period with a Lewis 3-point play for a 32-29 lead, but the Trojans took the lead for good 33-32 at the 8:19 mark on a DeGray layup. Polk's jumper cut Tulsa's deficit to one point at 37-36 with 5:23 left in the period, but Little Rock closed out the third quarter on a 13-4 run for the 12-point lead.

In the fourth stanza, Little Rock led by as many as 18 points with 8:40 remaining before settling for the 10-point victory.

Tulsa opened the game on an 8-2 run for the early lead before the Trojans outscored the Hurricane 15-4 to take a 17-12 lead with just under one minute remaining in the first quarter. Polk's layup and a traditional 3-point play by Rebecca Lescay pulled Tulsa to within two points, 19-17, at the end of the opening period.

The teams ended the first half knotted up at 29-29. Tulsa scored just 12-second quarter points, while Little Rock totaled 10 points in the stanza. There were four lead changes in the second quarter as neither team led by more than two points.

At intermission, Tulsa had three players – Polk, Brady and Lewis – with six points apiece, while Kyra Collier led the visitors with eight points. Tulsa shot 45.8 percent from the field and 50-percemt from three-point range, while the Trojans converted on 40-percent of its shots, but was just 1-of-6 from three-point range.

Tulsa will be back at the Reynolds Center on Thursday for an afternoon matchup against the Arkansas Razorbacks. Tipoff is scheduled for 2:00 p.m. The Hurricane will close out the 2018 portion of the season on Saturday, Dec. 29 with a 2:00 p.m. contest against the UTEP Miners.