Temple University women’s basketball (15-13, 7-8 The American Athletic Conference) dropped its third straight game on Saturday to Tulsa (8-20, 3-12 The AAC) by a score of 68-64.
Temple was outplayed and out-hustled from start to finish on its Senior Day.
“I’ve been a part of senior nights where I feel like I’ve had to calm people down and try to let them know that we can’t win in the first minute,” coach Tonya Cardoza said. “It was something completely different today.”
Tulsa came into the game averaging just 55.7 points per game but put up 68 points on the Owls’ defense on Saturday.
Junior guard Rebecca Lescay scored 24 points on 11-of-18 shooting along with six rebounds. Lescay only averages 7.2 points per game.
“She’s just going to constantly work, put the ball on the floor, wait for you to make a mistake, that’s what she does,” Cardoza said. “She’s just pure hustle.”
Cardoza said Tulsa was playing with an energy the Owls could not match.
“I definitely felt like they outworked us and felt like they played with the passion and energy that we should have been playing with, it being our senior night, our last home game,” she said.
The Owls turned the ball over 19 times and gave Tulsa 18 points off those turnovers.
“I just felt like our offense was off,” redshirt-sophomore guard Ashley Jones said.
Jones had 20 points but took 19 shots. Junior forward Mia Davis was the only other Owl to reach double figures, scoring 13 points on 6-of-15 shooting.
Junior guard Emani Mayo stayed in the rotation, playing 21 minutes. She came up with multiple steals late in the game but was unable to contribute on the offensive end.
Mayo had four points and sophomore guard Marissa Mackins put up seven points on 2-of-8 shooting. Graduate student forward Lena Niang shot 3-of-11 from the field, only contributing eight points.
“It just felt like every play we tried to run, someone wasn’t doing their job,” Cardoza said.
This is another loss that is crushing the Owls’ postseason hopes. Tulsa had won just two games in 2020.
“We put ourselves in the position early on in January that all we had to do was just take care of business and we didn’t take care of business,” Cardoza said. “So whatever happens, happens but we didn’t do our part.”
The Owls’ final game of the regular season is Monday, March 2, at Tulane (12-15, 7-7 The AAC).
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