Nov. 21, 2008
Box Score
OXFORD, Miss. - -
Complete Box Score in PDF Format 
The University of Memphis women's basketball team (2-2) could not battle the size in the paint of the Ole Miss Rebels in an 84-63 loss at Ole Miss, Friday night. The Tigers gave up 34 points in the paint as a cold-shooting first half built a hole too deep for Memphis to overcome.
"I wish I could have seen it, but there was an invisible seven foot monster in the paint that just intimidated our team tonight," Head Coach Melissa McFerrin said. "Ole Miss is a good team, I don't want to take anything away from them, but we made them look good. We were almost even on rebounds and were even in turnovers in the first half, but at 10-0 the game was over in the minds of our players. When your big kids don't play with good effort against 6-2s and 6-4s it's gonna show itself. We still have to mature as a team and learn how mentally tough we have to be."
Memphis had a slow start to the game, missing its first six shots of the game and committing four turnovers while spotting Ole Miss a 10-0 lead before the under 16 minute media timeout. The cold shooting continued in the first half, as Memphis connected on just two of its first 13 shots while the Rebels built an 18-6 lead. Memphis was 3-for-23 with 6:37 to play and finally broke in to double-digit scoring with 3:06 to play when Alex Winchell hit her first points of the night. At one point, the Tigers' shooting had dropped to 11.1 percent from the field, but the team regrouped to connect on four of their final six shots and forced a pair of Ole Miss turnovers to pull back to 20 percent from the field on 7-of-35 shooting.
Memphis came out of the locker room on a 12-4 run to close to 46-31 down at the under 16 minute media timeout powered by six points from Paris Leonard and a pair of layups from Alex Winchell and Ramses Lonlack, but Ole Miss came back with a 13-7 run to push it back to 59-38 off six points in the paint and a pair of layups.
:"Trying to get our kids to believe that they have a chance to compete against teams like this is something we are trying to establish her," McFerrin said. "We wanted the tempo to be very, very high, so I wasn't as concerned with the quick shots. We did pick up some intensity in the second half, but it's easy to be intense when you're down by 22, I want us to be intense when it's just 10 or two."
Senior guard Paris Leonard led Memphis with 24 points and five rebounds. Ramses Lonlack finished with 11 points and eight rebounds, including six offensive boards. Alex Winchell added nine points in the loss.
The Tigers return home Monday and will host Ohio University in a game that tips at 7:05 p.m.
