Women's Basketball Falls at Home to Murray State
- Reece Leddy
- 53 minutes ago
- 2 min read
A chance to take control of the Missouri Valley Conference at home slipped away for Belmont women’s basketball as the Bruins fell 78-71 to Murray State on Saturday.
The Bruins suffered another loss to the Racers–the same team that snapped their undefeated Missouri Valley Conference streak in the teams’ previous meeting.
Murray State’s series sweep secures the head-to-head tiebreaker against Belmont if the top two seeds of the MVC finish the regular season with the same record.
The first meeting was not pretty, as Belmont recorded its second-lowest scoring game of the season in a 69-48 loss.
The second meeting was far more competitive, as Belmont kept pace with the Racers in a game that featured 14 lead changes and 12 ties.
Both teams were efficient in the paint, with 34 points apiece.
While the Racers and Bruins posted nearly identical field-goal percentages, with Belmont shooting 42.9% and Murray State 42.2%, the Bruins held a significant advantage from 3-point range.
It felt like anyone’s game to win up until the fourth quarter when the Racers started pulling away from Belmont’s mistakes.
Although turnovers were a major factor in Belmont’s loss in the first meeting, that was not the case this time. The Bruins scored 16 points off Murray State turnovers, while the Racers managed just four.
Belmont committed 21 personal fouls, including nine in the fourth quarter, though that was not the biggest factor in the loss in coach Bart Brooks’ eyes.
“There's a combination of things that didn't help…you can't put a really good free throw shooting team on the free throw line,” Brooks said. “I think our biggest issue was we missed layups and we missed free throws that we needed to make in a game like this.”
Murray State shot 80% from the free-throw line, making 16 of 20, compared to Belmont’s 55.6% on 10 of 18.
Despite the different final score, the matchup carried familiar themes from two weeks ago.
Junior Murray State guard Halli Poock repeated her dominant performance from the previous matchup, scoring 23 points to exceed her 22-point outing from the first matchup.
Sophomore forward Hilary Fuller was again a top-player totaling 18 points and five rebounds.
Graduate guard Tuti Jones again had a quiet night, scoring just two points, the same total she recorded in the previous meeting against Murray State.
“She's a six-year player who's been through a lot of basketball games…we'd love her to score the ball a little bit better, but she did a lot of things well for us,” Brooks said.
Jones finished with four rebounds and a team-high of six assists.
Knoxville native and graduate guard Avery Strickland became the outlier of familiarity, amping up her previous eight-point performance to tie Hillary Fuller with 18 points.
The loss keeps Belmont in the No. 2 spot in the MVC standings and adds another layer of separation for the Racers at the top.
Belmont will spend this week in Iowa facing the Drake Bulldogs in Des Moines on Thursday before heading to Cedar Falls to take on Northern Iowa Saturday.
This article was written by Reece Leddy