MOBILE, Ala. – The Coastal Carolina women’s basketball team suffered a 68-62 loss at South Alabama on Thursday evening inside the Mitchell Center. The Chants fell behind by over 20 points in the first half, which proved to be too large of a deficit to overcome despite making it a two-possession game with two minutes remaining.
The Chants fall to 10-8, 4-3 with the loss and remain winless on the road this season. South Alabama improves to 12-5, 5-1.
USA, which entered the contest as the top shooting team in the Sun Belt, finished the game shooting 40 percent from the field. The Jags made 12 3-pointers for the game while holding the Chants to just one.
Chyna Ellis paced the Jags with a 12 point, 10 rebound, 10 block triple-double, the first in USA history since 1989. Ellis’ fourth block of the game gave her the Sun Belt Conference record in career blocks. Savannah Jones had team-leading 17 points, and Genesis Perrymond added 11.
DJ Williams had a career scoring effort in the loss, leading all players with 29 points. Williams made 11 baskets on 21 attempts, the highest field goal percentage for a Chant with over 15 attempts from the field this season. She was also 7-of-10 on free throws, one of the few Chants to perform well at the line as Coastal finished 17-of-28 as a team.
Jas Adams, Coastal’s leading scorer this season, saw her 10-game streak of scoring in double figures come to an end as the senior finished with seven points.
Following a pair of DJ Williams’ free throws to begin the game, South Alabama scored 13 unanswered points to go ahead by double figures in the game’s first five minutes. Erin Autio scored USA’s first nine points on 3-pointers, and the Jags hit three more triples before the quarter came to an end. USA finished the opening frame with seven straight points to take a 30-14 lead. Williams and Naheria Hamilton scored 12 of Coastal’s 14 first-quarter points.
South Alabama’s 68 field goal shooting percentage in the first quarter dropped to 29 percent in the second, but four of the Jags’ five baskets came from beyond the arc. Perrymond made two of the 3-pointers in the first half of the quarter, and Ellis hit consecutive triples in the final minute to give USA a 47-26 lead at halftime.
USA’s shooting percentage dropped even further in the third quarter as the Jags made just three of their 16 attempts. Coastal was able to trim a 21-point deficit to just eight points over the 10 minutes, scoring 10 unanswered points over a four-minute span and totaling 19 for the quarter. Williams made half of Coastal’s six field goals in the period, and added another two points at the free-throw line. The Chants got seven of their points in the quarter at the line as USA committed eight personal fouls.
The Jags returned the margin to double figures shortly into the fourth quarter as Perrymond and Shaforia Kines hit a pair of 3-pointers. The Chants then scored eight unanswered points – including four by Williams – to trail by just four points with 1:36 remaining. Kines stopped the streak with a jumper, and Savannah Jones made a pair of late free throws to put the game out of reach.
Coastal returns to action on Saturday at Troy. The Chants and Trojans tip off at 2 p.m. (CT).
