University of Memphis Athletics
University of Memphis
Indiana
Nov 18, 2010 | Women's Basketball
Nov. 18, 2010
Box Score
Complete Box Score in PDF Format 
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - - Led by four players with double-digit points and by outscoring host Indiana (2-1) 50-38 in the second half, the University of Memphis (2-1) picked up its first road win of the 2010-2011 season Thursday night in Bloomington, 80-71.
"I promise you (in past games coaching here), if we've won, we've won by very close margins," Head Coach Melissa McFerrin said. "This is a very difficult place to play and a difficult place to win. I just felt like our team was so composed and so driven this evening. We didn't play particularly well in the first half, but we picked it up in the second half. We got very focused and we got such great contributions from everybody. We had four players with double digit points and six players with four or more rebounds and just a really great team effort. I didn't feel like there was a player that I put in that didn't do exactly what we asked them to do. It was a great team win."
Jasmine Lee led Memphis with a second straight double-double, scoring 19 points with 12 rebounds, and adding two steals. Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir scored a career-best 15 points with a team-high four steals, while Brittany Carter and Ramses Lonlack each added 13 points in the win.
With the score tied at four, Indiana went to work from the perimeter, knocking down three straight triples to go up 13-7. The Hoosiers kept hitting from the outside, hitting seven three-point field goals in a little over 11 minute span, knocking down just one two-point jumper in the midst of the barrage from beyond the arc.
But with Indiana up 21-14 thanks to the three-point shots and 11 Memphis turnovers in the first 10 minutes of the game, the Tigers got out on back-to-back transition buckets from Mary Jackson and Abdul-Qaadir to pull to 21-18 down. But after a steal, Memphis committed a turnover on the outlet pass, allowing the Hoosiers to knock down a pair of late field goals with extra offensive possessions to hit the locker room up 31-30 at the break after Memphis could not get its offense started in the last three minutes of the half.
"The first couple of minutes, everybody was nervous," Abdul-Qaadir said. "But everybody pulled together and we just played an amazing game, we played our game."
In the second half, it was Memphis who was the aggressors, having made the adjustment to the Hoosier three-point shooters in the locker room.
"To be honest, we intentionally were closing shooters our a little short because we wanted to make 14 (Hope Elam) and 32 (Jori Davis) prove that they were shooters," McFerrin said. "(Elam) did, she hurt us, so we changed the way we played her and we did not change one bit the way we played anybody else."
The game swung in the Tigers favor when Ramses Lonlack kicked a ball out to Alex Winchell, who knocked down her only bucket of the evening from the baseline, giving Memphis its first lead of the game at 42-41. Savannah Ellis added a bucket and one to push the lead to 45-41, but Indiana came back with a pair of buckets off back-to-back Memphis turnovers to retake the lead at 47-45. But Abdul-Qaadir checked back into the game and drove the right wing, converting a bucket that started a 6-0 Memphis run that included a pair of Brittany Carter breakouts for layups to push Memphis up 55-49.
The Tigers would push that lead to eight before Indiana started converting jumpers in the paint and sticking back offensive rebounds to close to 63-61 down follow back-to-back Lindsay Whitney steals and layups. But that was as close as Indiana would get, as Lee came back into the game and scored eight of her team-high 19 points in the final five minutes of the game to help preserve the Tigers' second straight win.
Memphis will remain on its road swing with a Saturday game at Ohio University, Saturday, at 2 p.m. (ET). Fans can follow that game for free on the Gametracker stats program or can pay a subscription fee and listen to Jeff Brightwell's play-by-play call. Fans in Memphis can hear Brightwell's call over the airwaves on 91.7 FM, WUMR.
