NASHVILLE – A frantic final two minutes saw the Lipscomb (5-24, 2-12) women’s basketball team lose its lead late as Kennesaw State (11-18, 6-8) won 68-64.

Each team take the lead multiple times in the waning moments of the game, before a Jasmine McAllister three-point play gave the Owls the lead for good on the Lady Bisons senior day.

“I don’t question their fight or their effort or their desire to win,” Lipscomb women’s basketball head coach Greg Brown said. “You want to put yourself in the position to win it in the end like that.

“We took good shots; we hit big open shots,” Brown said. “You like a lot of things that we did, there were just too many key defensive breakdowns like the layup there at the end.”

Senior Ashley Southern posted a double-double with 20 points and 12 rebounds. She also added three assists and one block.

“First and most importantly, the three seniors are great kids, and they’re going to be very successful in the things they are going into,” Brown said. “We’ll miss them. We’ll miss them more as people that we will on the floor, even as good of players as they were.

“You’re fortunate as a coach to be able coach great players and great kids. Those are the types of people we want to recruit.”

Junior Alex Banks notched 17 points while shooting 7-12 from the field.

Sophomore Amber Fuqua scored 13, including a personal 8-0 run to help give Lipscomb the lead heading into the fourth quarter.

Sophomore Loren Cagle collected five points, four rebounds, and seven assists.

QUICK HITS:

• The Owls had four players finish in double-figures: Aareon Smith (15), Kelly Dulkoski (12), Deandrea Sawyers (11), and Jasmine McAllister (11).
• Southern’s double-double was the 38^th of her career and ninth of the season.
• Lipscomb’s 44.8 field goal percentage (26-58) bested Kennesaw’s 42.6 (26-61) mark.
• The Lady Bisons shot a perfect 4-4 from the free throw line.

UP NEXT: The Lady Bisons will be travelling to Jacksonville as the seven seed to take on the two-seeded Dolphins in the first round of the Atlantic Sun Tournament on March 4.

“It’s a new season,” Brown said. “That’s exactly what we’ll talk about tomorrow. We’ve got to go to Jacksonville and play. We played them well this year; we beat them last year. We’ll figure out what we have to do. We’ll get a good week of rest, and then we’ll be ready to go.

“The seniors have the goal of winning their first first round tournament game. Of course, to win a championship you have to win the first round tournament game anyway, so it doesn’t change any of our goals. You use the regular season to sit back and evaluate, knowing exactly what we’ll have to do this week, then it’s a matter of simple execution and grinding it out during the game.”