BATON ROUGE — Southwest Mississippi Community College dropped a basketball doubleheader to Baton Rouge Community College here Monday night, with the Lady Bears falling 67-61 and the Bears going down 94-82 in double overtime.
The Lady Bears (2-1) trailed 35-23 at the half and battled back to within five points in the second half.
However, an inability to make free throws proved to be the downfall for the Lady Bears, who sank just nine of 24 shots from the charity stripe.
For Baton Rouge (2-2), the win avenged an earlier loss to Southwest in the Coca-Cola Classic. BRCC’s Teagra Clifton led all scorers with 16 points.
Ta’keya Felder netted 12 points to lead Southwest. Octavia Bearden, Alisha Rayborn and Tessa Trippi had eight points each.
“We’ll bounce back,” Southwest women’s head coach Mark Swindle said. “We (just) have to learn from our mistakes and get ready for our next game.”
In the men’s game, BRCC (5-1) held a 34-28 halftime lead. Southwest (0-3) stayed close in the second half and forced the game into two overtimes before running out of steam.
“Our guys left it all on the court,” Bears’ head coach Bill Wallace said. “They played their guts out. We’ll continue to get better and we’re going to win some games.”
Freshman Mitch Thompson led four Bears in double figures with 18 points in the game. Dane Hogan pumped in 14 points with Derrick Harris and D. J. Lewis each adding 11. The Bears hit 17 of 34 free throws.
BRCC’s Rarlensee Nelson had 31 points to top all scorers. He and his teammates combined to hit 34 of 49 free throws.
Southwest will take a few days off before returning to the court Nov. 23, when they travel to New Orleans to face Delgado.
