The Southern women’s basketball team saved its best for last in the Southwestern Athletic Conference tournament championship game on Saturday.
The fourth-seeded Jaguars trailed entering the fourth quarter, but put everything together as they surged past No. 7 Arkansas-Pine Bluff to take a 62-53 win at Bartow Arena in Birmingham, Alabama.
“The young ladies stepped up,” Southern coach Carlos Funchess said. “They did what they do. They kept taking good shots, and I knew eventually some of them would fall. We got hot at the right time.”
Southern shot 35.7% for the game, but made 8 of 11 shots in the fourth quarter, including three 3-pointers.
The win earns Southern (18-14) an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. Pairings will be announced Sunday night, and play will begin on Wednesday and Thursday.
The NCAA berth is Southern’s sixth overall and its second under head coach Carlos Funchess. The Jaguars last NCAA bid was in 2019, after Southern won regular-season and tournament titles.
“We know we’re going to have a tough matchup (in the NCAA tournament), but we’re going to go out and represent Southern University as well as we can,” Funchess said.
One the game’s key battles was in the paint, where Southern slowed down Pine Bluff’s twin towers of Maya Peat and Maori Davenport. Peat scored 10 points while Davenport had 12, but they were held to a combined two points in the fourth quarter.
Southern’s Genovea Johnson scored 18 points, most on slashing drives to the basket. Amani McWain made three 3-pointers and scored 12 of her 15 points in the second half. Taylor Williams was 6 of 6 at the free-throw line and finished with 10 points.
Southern trailed 41-38 after three quarters, but tied the game on a 3-pointer by Aleighyah Fontenot, who made the game-winning buzzer-beater on Friday against Jackson State. After a jumper by Johnson, McWain made back-to-back 3-pointers to give Southern the lead for good at 49-47.
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