Courtesy of LA Tech Athletic Communications
Louisiana Tech had no answers to the hot shooting Richmond Spiders on Sunday morning at the Vibrant Thanksgiving Classic inside the Knapp Center. The Lady Techsters fell 83-56.
With the loss, Tech fell for the third time in three days at the holiday tournament, also dropping games against Drake (77-66) and Maine (60-54).
“It’s a tough fourth game in seven days for this group,” said head coach Brooke Stoehr. “We played hard at times. That second quarter was just brutal offensively. I thought we got several wide-open looks and couldn’t get a three to go down. You go one of 11 from three. This group is shooting 36% from three.
“I don’t know if it’s the third game in three days or the fourth game in seven days on the road, but We’ve got to find a way to have some toughness about us to knock down a shot. We started the game pretty well offensively. It’s just that we can’t have a single-digit quarter scoring. They are a good team, and we were trading no points for threes.”
On Sunday Richmond (5-1) came out shooting from behind the arc, connecting on six of their first nine three-pointers. Still, LA Tech (2-4) held close throughout the first quarter. Jianna Morris hit the final shot of the quarter just as the buzzer went off to make it 25-17.
After shooting 46 percent in the first, the Lady Techsters’ shots stopped falling as they finished 1-16 in the quarter. Richmond continued to shoot it at a hot pace and finished the half shooting 16-29 from the field and 9-16 from deep.
The shots that didn’t fall in the second quarter started to fall again in the third. Jianna Morris connected on back-to-back threes to cut the deficit to 61-36. Richmond would again connect from deep to extend the lead back up to 70-38 to end the quarter.
The fourth quarter saw the majority of the action by the subs. Louisiana Tech was able to outscore Richmond 18-13.
Jianna Morris led the Lady Techsters in scoring with 13 points on 5-9 from the field with three 3-pointers. Salma Bates contributed 12 points, six rebounds, and three assists.
Maggie Doogan, Rachel Ullstrom, and Addie Budnik accounted for 48 points and 11 of the Spiders’ 16 threes for the game.
The Lady Techsters will host ULM Wednesday at 6 p.m.
