By Mike Kays
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — During warmups here Wednesday night, Northeastern State women’s coach Randy Gipson didn’t sound like a guy who thought his ladies could do to Arkansas what another Division II school, LeMoyne, did to men’s power Syracuse this week.
That’s before his team shot a chilly 27 percent (7-of-26) in a first half only to trail by a mere 30-22 at intermission.
The what-if’s that would accompany that didn’t go away in the second half.
The RiverHawks stayed in the contest, getting within a possession on a couple of occasions, but couldn’t sustain a run long enough to get the lead and lost the exhibition contest, 55-48, at Bud Walton Arena.
“I don’t know what to expect yet,” Gipson explained afterward. “We’ve got a lot of new people, but to be in that position at halftime was encouraging.”
NSU, which actually had three of its four starters from last season on the court, turned up the defense in the second half, holding Arkansas to just six points on two field goals and a free throw for the first 10 minutes. Jasmine Wright’s free throws got NSU within three, 36-33, with 10:47 to play and the RiverHawks got within that margin again with 5:48 to play on a layup by Sarah Green.
Ultimately, there wasn’t enough of a surge offensively even though NSU outshot Arkansas in the second half, 34.5 percent (10-of-29) to 30.4 percent (7-of-23). The Razorbacks wound up holding the RiverHawks off at the free-throw line, making 11-of-13 (84.6 percent) after the break.
“I’ve preached to our kids that if you’re really committed to play on the defensive end and rebound, you can stay in games any night,” Gipson said. “What I like is that this gives us some validity with our kids in what we’re talking about.
“We took some charges, went body-to-body with them and got some tough rebounds. We were never really able to shoot the ball well tonight, but sometimes when you play real hard on defense, I thought we had to expend a little energy to defend them, and sometimes it hurts your offensive game a little bit.”
Fort Gibson grad Kendra Dean’s layup with 12:11 to play in the first half gave NSU its third and final lead, 12-11. Arkansas, a preseason pick to finish seventh in the Southeastern Conference, then answered with 13 unanswered points on the way to an 18-2 run and a 29-15 advantage with 4:38 to go in the half.
That turned out to be the biggest lead the Razorbacks had.
NSU was 0-of-10 from the field during that run of just under eight minutes, but then Arkansas, which shot 45.8 percent on 11-of-24 from the field to the break, was 1-of-15 from the field during an early portion of the second half and wound up shooting 38.3 percent (18-of-47) to NSU’s 30.9 (17-of-55).
“We could have took their team and our team out to see if either one could throw it in the ocean,” said Arkansas graduate assistant David Walker, the son of Fort Gibson High girls coach Jerry Walker. “Offensively it was a weird night, but hey, they played pretty scrappy.”
Dean, who finished with eight points and four rebounds, said nerves might have gotten to her team in the stretch.
“We got down within three and we scrambled a little bit and had we calmed down some, it might have been a different outcome,” she said. “We all ran into the locker room jumping and excited after the game. You got to look at the good part of the things you’ve done and there was a lot to be happy about tonight.”
Green led NSU with 10 points. Arkansas was led by Charity Ford with 17 points.
NSU was minus one starter, the Lone Star Conference’s freshman of the year last season in Alix Perkins, who is recovering from a hip flexor. She’s expected back when the RiverHawks get another test against the 21st-ranked team in Division II, Gannon University at 9 a.m. Friday in the regular season opener at the Disney East Coast Classic in Orlando. They’ll follow that with a game against North Alabama on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and Sunday’s finale against Shippensburgh at 11:15 a.m.
