Leave it to Sandy Pugh to put it plainly.
Saturday afternoon in the F.G. Clark Activity Center, her Southern Unversity women’s basketball team won for the fifth time in six games, pulling away for a 62-48 win over Arkansas-Pine Bluff. That part was good.
The Jaguars’ play, however, was hardly crisp.
“Was I worried? No,” she said. “Was I upset? Yes.”
It was easy to understand why.
Facing a persistent-but-winless team in UAPB, the Jaguars held the Lady Lions without a field goal over the first 6 minutes, 17 seconds.
Southern committed only nine turnovers and had a 52-41 advantage in rebounds.
But the Jaguars shot only 32 percent from the field and rarely looked sharp on either end of the floor.
Only two players, Kendra Coleman (11 points) and Laneisha Stephens (10 points), scored in double figures. Adrian Sanders added eight points, but the three players combined to go 6-for-31 from the floor.
Southern led by only three points at halftime, 25-22 — and after the Jaguars built a second-half lead of 13, UAPB had cut it to seven points.
“Everybody we play, we’re going to get their best game,” Pugh said. “Unfortunately, we aren’t always ready for their best game.”
The most interesting news for Southern (10-9, 9-3 Southwestern Athletic Conference) came not from the Activity Center, but from 121 miles away, in Lorman, Miss., where Alcorn State tripped up first-place Mississippi Valley State, 65-61.
That dropped Valley into a first-place tie with SU, setting up a showdown that already figured to go a long way toward determining the regular-season champion.
The teams square off at 5:30 p.m. Monday in Baton Rouge.
As for Saturday’s game, in more encouraging news, fifth-year senior Jamie Floyd had nine points and a game-high 13 rebounds; freshman Anyssa Hoyle scored six points in 10 minutes; and in the final five minutes, Stephens had two rebounds, one steal, one assist and an important 15-foot jumper that gave the Jaguars a 10-point lead with 2:37 left.
“The good thing about it (was), I didn’t think they had enough offense to get it done,” Pugh said. “The only thing we had to do was be consistent, take care of the basketball and get it down to the bigs.”
It was another coulda-woulda-shoulda game for the Lady Lions (0-23, 0-12), who allowed Southern to grab 24 offensive rebounds and score 17 second-chance points.
UAPB also had 20 turnovers.
“We turned the ball over in crucial moments. ... That’s things that we’ve seen all year long,” coach Cary Shelton said. “We attempted to make a run a couple of times. I think the most we were down was 17, and we got it back down to seven.”
SU finished on a 15-5 run.
Six regular-season games remain for the Jaguars, beginning with Monday’s date with Valley.