Louisiana Tech Women Win Big One

With dozens of former players and coaches from the tradition-rich school watching in the stands, the pressure was on Louisiana Tech.

The Lady Techsters responded by playing their best game of the season.

Tamicha Jackson scored 26 points and sparked her team’s harassing defense and No. 4 Louisiana Tech beat No. 2 Connecticut, 90-76, Monday at Ruston, La. Amanda Wilson had 17 points and 16 rebounds The victory came as Louisiana Tech was celebrating its 25 years of women’s basketball.

“I don’t think you could have put more pressure on our basketball team than that did,” Coach Leon Barmore said.

Louisiana Tech (14-2) came up with 18 steals and forced 25 Connecticut turnovers--15 in the second half. Svetlana Abrosimova led the Huskies (15-2) with 24 points but committed 10 turnovers.

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Ukari Figgs and Stephanie White-McCarty each scored 20 points for No. 3 Purdue (14-1, 6-0), which recorded a 71-60 victory over Illinois (10-7, 4-3) in a Big Ten game at Champaign, Ill. . . . Coco Miller scored 20 points and No. 5 Georgia (16-1) escaped with a hard-fought, 88-82 victory over Georgia Tech (9-8) at Marietta, Ga. Georgia Tech, which has lost 21 in a row to Georgia, was within 85-82 with 27 seconds left. . . . Juana Brown scored 10 of North Carolina’s 12 points in a key second-half spurt and the No. 7 Tar Heels (19-2, 6-1) notched a 79-68 victory over Virginia (11-5, 5-2) in an Atlantic Coast Conference game at Charlottesville, Va. Brown finished with 20 points. . . . Grace Daley scored 25 points, making nine of 10 free throws, in leading Tulane (15-2, 6-1) to a 81-72 Conference USA victory over DePaul (8-9, 3-4) at Chicago.

MEN

Rutgers 74, No. 20 Syracuse 71--Freshman Dahntay Jones scored a season-high 23 points and the Scarlet Knights won a Big East game over the Orangemen at Piscataway, N.J. Rutgers made 15 of 18 foul shots over the final 5:16.

“That was a good win and a good way to win especially because we had been knocking on the door and playing good basketball but not quite enough to beat the ranked teams in our league,” Rutgers Coach Kevin Bannon said of his team, which had lost four of its last five that included two close losses to No. 8 St. John’s.

The Scarlet Knights (11-6, 4-4) had just one field goal over the last 4 1/2 minutes, a layup by Jeff Greer that gave them a 74-68 lead with 11 seconds to play.

Allen Griffin made his second three-pointer of the final 30 seconds to bring Syracuse (12-5, 4-4) within 74-71 with 1.9 seconds left.

Rutgers was unable to inbound the ball on its first try and was forced to call a timeout. The second try at inbounding was tipped to Ryan Blackwell of Syracuse but his three-point try at the buzzer hit the rim.

No. 19 Kansas 76, Texas 67--Eric Chenowith had 20 points and 13 rebounds and Jeff Boschee made five of seven three-point shots for 15 points and the Jayhawks (13-4, 5-0) defeated the Longhorns (9-9, 5-1), 76-67, in a Big 12 game at Lawrence, Kan.