Big 2nd Quarter Moves Jackson State Past Women’s Basketball

A close first quarter that saw battle for positioning would quickly turn into Jackson State gaining a lofty advantage over Texas Southern before earning an 87-58 victory Monday evening in the H&PE Arena.

JSU (7-8, 4-1 SWAC), a perennial power in the Southwestern Athletic Conference, was coming off its first regular-season conference loss since Jan. 4, 2021, and out for a bounce-back win, but Texas Southern (1-16, 1-5 SWAC) fought tooth and nail before succumbing to the sheer height advantage owned by Jackson State, who has four players standing 6-foot-3 or taller.

TSU held a small lead for the better part of the first five minutes of the game before JSU stated taking control of the ball on both ends of the court.

TSU’s Micah Gray converted a layup with 5:46 left in the first quarter for a 9-7 lead. Jariyah Covington drained a three just 19 seconds later for JSU to give the Lady Tigers their first lead of the game. After being down 15-9, TSU would storm back to tie the game at 16-16 on an Andriana Avent three with 2:36 left in the opening stanza. Daphane White answered with a layup on JSU’s next possession, but Avent was there to knock down a pair of free throws to knot it up at 18-18.

The 18-18 tie would prove to be the last time the game would be tied as JSU would outscore TSU by 17 in the second quarter for a 46-25 halftime lead as TSU went 6:50 in the second quarter without making a field goal and allowed the Lady Tigers to go on a 17-1 run to blow things to pieces.

A field-goal-less stretch of 9:07 in the third period saw everything that could go wrong actually going wrong for TSU and JSU doing everything right allowing JSU to own an advantage as high as 73-32 before Avent drained a three to relieve some of the stress befallen on the shoulders of TSU’s players.

Despite the game being out of reach by the start of the fourth quarter, Texas Southern fans were treated to a much better effort that saw the home team take the quarter by an 18-14 count.

White and Angel Jackson led JSU with 13 points each while Avent led Texas Southern with 21 points. Taniya Lawson had a nice outing going for 13 points and six rebounds. Micah Gray, who was averaging 19.4 ppg coming into the game, was held to her fewest points since Dec. 14, 2022, as she ended a seven-game double-figure scoring streak with just nine points.

UP NEXT
Texas Southern will hit the road to resume SWAC play when the Tigers travel to Alabama for a big weekend series stating on Saturday against Alabama A&M at 3 p.m. CST before concluding the trip on Mon., Jan. 23, at 5:30 p.m. CST at Alabama State.