Red Wolves to advance in the SBC tournament

The Herald - sports









March Madness is alive and well in the Big Easy as the Arkansas State Red Wolves pull an 61-54 upset over 6 seed Georgia Southern, in the opening round of the Sun Belt Conference Championship Tuesday night.











With the win, the 11 seed Red Wolves improved its overall record to 7-24. 






It feels good to get the first win here,” A-State head coach Brian Boyer said. “I am proud of the team and the way they battled the whole game. The thing that stands out to me is the third quarter because Georgia Southern made that run and hit back-to-back 3-pointers.”





Arkansas State was led by freshman Jada Ford with 23 points followed by Starr Taylor with 11. Lauren Bradshaw grabbed a career-high of 13 rebounds. The team grabbed a season-high of 48 rebounds.





A-State shot 33.9 percent from the field, but went 17-of-22, 77.3 from the free throw line, including a 9-of-10 mark down the stretch to help close out the win. Georgia Southern shot 31.6 percent from the field, but lost the battle on the boards 48-34 and allowed the Red Wolves to score 24 points in the paint.





 Madison Heckert missed tying career-highs in both rebounds and blocks. She finished with seven rebounds and three blocks, missing her career mark by one in each category.





“We really struggled in third quarters of late. That’s one of those runs where we have struggled with that throughout the year. It was neat to see us respond the right way. Individually, Jada offensively was successful against their zone. Starr Taylor was good early on with her pressure and our rebounding kept them from getting good opportunities,” Boyer said.





A-State advances to take on No. 3 Troy Thursday evening at 7:30 p.m. in the quarterfinals at Lakefront Arena in New Orleans.






















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