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Ben Adamson (Missouri State Sports Information) SPRINGFIELD — The visiting Arkansas-Little Rock Trojans used a 19-0 run midway through the second half Monday evening to hand Missouri State a 58-47 loss and spoil the home opener at JQH Arena.
The Lady Bears (2-4) trailed 26-24 at halftime and tied the score at 28-28 with 5:54 left in the third quarter on an Aubrey Buckley layup. MSU briefly held a pair of two-point leads, the second on a Lexi Hughes bucket with 3:28 remaining, before the Trojans (3-4) scored the game’s next 19 points until Lee Ann Polowy’s second 3-pointer of the contest stopped the run and made it 52-38 with 5:57 remaining in the game.
Polowy added another trey in the fourth period to match a career high with nine points on three 3-pointers, and she also dished out a career-high four assists. Buckley’s basket with 17 seconds left made for the final margin and gave her nine points, Hughes scored nine and Danielle Gitzen had eight.
Missouri State opened the game on a 10-2 run, and the Trojans immediately responded with a 9-0 run to take the lead with 2:52 left in the first quarter. After Gitzen’s 3-pointer made it 13-11 MSU, the Lady Bears went more than seven minutes without scoring until a Hughes triple cut the deficit to 18-16 with 5:15 until half. The senior twice hit driving shots for one-point leads late in the half before Little Rock closed on a 4-0 run.
After making more free throws than the opposition in each of the season’s first five games, MSU managed just a 1-for-4 showing at the foul line compared to 11-for-13 for the Trojans, and shot 36.5 percent overall. The Lady Bears did go 8-for-15 from long range, with five different players making a least one 3-pointer. Little Rock finished with a 31-28 rebounding edge.
Up next for the Lady Bears is a trip to in-state rival Missouri (4-2) for a 7 p.m. Friday contest in Columbia.
