Troy women drop two straight

(PHOTO/Joshua Thurston)

After starting the season out in a good way with two wins, the Troy women’s basketball team has suddenly lost two in a row.

The Trojans (2-2) fell to Mercer (2-2) on the road Tuesday night, Nov. 19, 86-81 after coming up short at home on Friday, Nov. 22, 77-71 to Tennessee State.

In Tuesday’s game, senior guard Joanna Harden led Troy with 24 points while her teammate Ronita Garrett finished with 17 points and seven rebounds.

Senior guard Brooke Bowie recorded a double-double against Mercer with 13 points and 12 boards while Chant Lewis had double digit points with 10 in the loss.

One disheartening stat after this game was that the Trojans shot 76 percent or 19 of 25 from the free throw line.

This is significant because Troy lost the game by five points, so if the team had cashed in fully from the charity stripe it would have walked away with a victory.

The Trojans continue to be outrebounded by the opposition and Mercer turned the trick to the tune of 48 boards over Troy’s 40.

The Friday loss to Tennessee State left a bad taste in Trojan head coach Chanda Rigby’s mouth.

“It’s not where we want to be,” Rigby said after the game Friday. “In a way we took a huge step backwards from where we were headed in the first two games.”

Harden had a double-double with 26 points and 11 rebounds in the Tennessee State game while teammate Ashley Beverly-Kelley was the only other Troy player in double-digit points with 15.

Junior forward Kourtney Coleman finished the game with five points but she also had 10 boards in the loss.

“We thought we were ready to play,” Rigby said. “It was the middle of the day, all the kids were here yelling for us, but we really didn’t have our mind on the small things that we need to do to win in which was stop people on defense and rebound.”

The Lady Tigers were able to get the best of the Trojans with 53 rebounds to Troy’s 48.

The score was knotted up 56-56 with 7:07 remaining in the game when Tennessee State took the lead for good and didn’t look back gaining an advantage of as much as 13 with 1:58 to go but in the end Troy lost by eight points.

This game came down to poor shooting on the Trojans’ part with Troy posting a meager 35.1 field goal percentage.

“We started subbing, trying to find somebody who did, and we couldn’t find that combination,” Rigby said. “If you are shooting well, it rights your wrongs.”

The Trojans next face Alabama-Huntsville, or UAH, at home on Tuesday, Nov. 26, at 7 p.m.

This is the last print Tropolitan of 2013 but Troy women’s basketball game stories will still be provided on tropnews.com for the Florida game on Dec. 4 and Evansville on Dec. 8.