Box Score
Shreveport, LA-The Belhaven women's basketball team wrapped up their three game road swing on Thursday night with a 66-56 Gulf Coast Athletic Conference loss at LSU-Shreveport. Jira Williams poured in 19 points, but it wasn't enough to overtake the second place Pilots who won for the eighth consecutive time.

LSU-Shreveport (15-3, 8-2 GCAC) never trailed in the game and opened up a 14-8 lead with 6:30 gone by in the first half. Tish Flowers got the Pilots on the board with the opening basket of the contest and TiKandis Edwards capped off the 14-8 run with a two point field goal. Williams fired in Belhaven's first field goal of the night to knot the score at 2-2 with 18:22 left on the first half clock. It would prove to be the only tie of the night.

Trailing 14-8, Belhaven (12-9, 3-7 GCAC) went on a quick 5-0 run to trim the deficit to a single point at 14-13 with 11:13 left until the break. Jessica Barlow and Courtney Fountain both drained field goals while Barlow added a free throw to get the Blazers back into the game. However, the Pilots reeled off a 16-6 run and built their largest lead of the night at 30-19 with 4:33 remaining in the opening period. The Blazers knocked the lead back down to six points right before halftime thanks to a Stasha Thomas bucket that made the score 32-26 in favor of LSUS when the first half buzzer sounded.

Belhaven opened the second half with a quick three pointer by Barlow which brought the Blazers to within one possession at 32-29. Unfortunately, Belhaven could get no closer than three points the rest of the game. LSU-Shreveport could never completely put the game away, but managed to maintain a 5 to 12 point lead over the last 16 minutes of the contest to secure the 66-56 victory.

Williams led the Blazers with a game high 19 points and Barlow posted 12 points to help pace the Belhaven offense. Octavia Mullins grabbed 11 rebounds and added seven points in the game. Courtney Ward dished out three assists and came up with five steals to help the Blazer defense force LSU-Shreveport into 28 turnovers. As a team, Belhaven made 33.3 percent of their field goals, 20 percent of their three point attempts, and were much improved from the free throw line converting on 84.6 percent of their shots at the stripe.

LSUS was led on offense by Tish Flowers with 13 points, TiKandis Edwards added 11 points, and Valerie Huizar finished the night with 10 points. Edwards pulled down 11 rebounds to record the double double and Huizar dealt out a game high seven assists. The Pilots outrebounded Belhaven 36-31 and were on fire from the field draining 51.1 percent of their field goals. LSUS made good on 30.8 percent of their shots from behind the three point line and converted 69.6 percent of their free throw opportunities.

Belhaven will try and regroup at home on Saturday night when they host Dillard University beginning at 5:00 PM in Rugg Arena. The Blazers pulled out a 68-67 win at Dillard back on January 7th in the first meeting of the season between the two schools.