Courtesy of LA Tech Athletic Communications
Four Lady Techsters reached double figures as Louisiana Tech (7-3) wrapped up the non-conference slate with a dominant 73-50 home win over South Alabama (2-6) Monday night. Robyn Lee led the way with a season-high 16 points.
Anna Larr Roberson tallied her fourth double-double of the season with 13 points and tied a career-high with 15 rebounds. Keiunna Walker and Amaya Brannon added 13 and 12 points, respectively.
Roberson picked up her fourth double-double of the season while also passing Teresa Weatherspoon on the all-time scoring list; she sits at No. 39 with 1,093 career points.
Tech outscored USA 46-9 on points in the paint.
“It’s no surprise we want to live through the paint, whether it’s from post touches or drives, but it creates high percentage shots for us, and you see that when we had 20 assists on 28 made field goals,” said Tech coach Brooke Stoehr. “We still had a few too many turnovers and left some empty possessions out there that we need to clean up.”
In the early going, LA Tech used a combination of 9-3 and 9-2 runs to take a 22-10 lead after the first 10 minutes of action, followed by a 10-3 run in the second quarter to build a 36-14 lead at the half.
Tech’s defense held South Alabama to just 1-19 shooting over the final 12 minutes of the first half.
In the third, South Alabama began to find its rhythm and opened the half with a 9-4 run, forcing Tech turnovers on three straight possessions. After a Tech timeout, the Techsters responded with an 8-0 of their own over the next two minutes and built their largest lead of the night at 27 (55-28) before USA ended the quarter on a made three.
The Jaguars opened the fourth with a 7-1 run, but Tech answered with a 7-2 run to build the lead back to 24 (63-39) with 5:58 remaining. Tech’s bench finished the contest while adding 29 points on the night, which marks the eighth time this season scoring 20 or more.
Tech shot .509 from the floor on 28-55 shooting while dishing out 20 assists. It is the third time this season that Tech has reached 20 or more assists. South Alabama finished the night 16-59 (.271) from the floor, including 10-32 from three (.313).
LA Tech is now 7-0 on the year when holding opponents to under 60 points and 6-0 when out rebounding the opposition after going plus-15 tonight on the glass (44-29).
“I loved our defensive effort early only giving up 14 points in the first half, but we had too many lulls in the second giving up 36 points and we have to figure out how to solve that,” said Stoehr. “We only had two stops in the first seven possessions, and we just can’t let teams do that. We can’t do that on the road or in conference and we need to continue working on our communication heading into the conference season.”
Tech opens C-USA play Sunday at 2 p.m. when the Lady Techsters host UTEP.
