Lady Frogs lose to No. 17 Arkansas, squeak by Utah
By Danny Gillham
Sports Editor

After squeaking out a victory Friday, the Lady Frogs lost to the Lady Razorbacks 76-66 Monday night in Fayetteville.

Arkansas went on a nine-point scoring run midway through the first half, starting with a layup by Katrina Nesby, to put the Lady Razorbacks up 10-9.

Going into the half, the Lady Razorbacks (2-0) led 37-33, but four free throws within three minutes helped the Lady Frogs (1-1) recapture the lead.

India Lewis, who scored 26 points, answered with a 3-pointer and a pair of free throws to tie the game at 42. In all, Lewis took six trips to the line in the second half. A Nesby bucket in the second half put the Lady Razorbacks up 58-53 to secure the lead for the rest of the game.

TCUs’ loss came after a nail-biter Friday.

The Lady Frogs knew their non-conference schedule would provide them with stiff competition heading into Conference USA play. Whether they expected it out of their first opponent is another story.

Against Utah Friday night the Lady Frogs trailed for the majority of the game, but made a comeback and survived a late technical foul to hang on for a 54-51 victory.

The game was marred by defense, turnovers and poor shooting, but head coach Jeff Mittie said Friday that is the way it goes sometimes.

“You got to win some games like this over the course of the year,” Mittie said. “The way we’ve been executing lately I thought this was going to be a struggle, and it certainly turned out to be.”

Senior guard Candace Baldwin said, “I like games like this.”

Despite the Utes tough defense and Shona Thorburn’s 27 points, Baldwin’s basket with less than two minutes left gave the Frog’s their first lead since 18-17 with 2:16 in the first half.

The game almost slipped from the Frogs with 10 seconds left. Leading by three, junior forward Tiffany Evans’ corralled a loose ball and called a timeout, which the Lady Frogs didn’t have. It resulted in two technical shots that put Utah within one.

However the Utes couldn’t converted in the last seconds, and sophomore Sandora Irvin fired a pass down to senior Ebony Shaw, who scored with a second left for the three-point win.

“It was just the heat of the moment, and a lot of things went through my mind,” Evans said of the timeout call. “It was a freshman mistake that I shouldn’t have made, but we came back as a team and came out with the win.”

Danny Gillham
The Associated Press contributed to this report.