USM wins again
Published 5:22 pm Thursday, December 20, 2007
Courtney Beasley scored a career-high 27 points to lead Southern Mississippi to an 80-56 win over Louisiana Tech on Wednesday in the Gulf Coast Classic as the Golden Eagles remained unbeaten in the event at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum.
Beasley was 12-of-19 from the field and helped the Golden Eagles (7-3) remain unbeaten in the three-day, round-robin tournament on the Mississippi coast.
The Bulldogs (2-8) have lost six of their last seven games.
Southern Miss was down by five points when Beasley and Jeremy Wise contributed to a 16-2 run to close the first half with 37-28 lead. Wise finished the game with 20 points.
Southern Miss built on its lead with an 8-2 run to open the second half, but Tech cut the deficit to nine with 12 minutes to play. Then Beasley’s 3-pointer started a 10-0 run to put the game out of reach for Louisiana Tech.
Kyle Gibson’s 14 points led Louisiana Tech and J.C. Clark added 11.
The tournament concludes Thursday when Southern Miss takes on Alcorn State and Louisiana Tech meets New Orleans.
New Orleans beat Alcorn 103-74 earlier Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Louisiana Tech beat Alcorn 78-69 and Southern Miss beat New Orleans 84-62.
• Bo McCaleb scored 23 points to lead New Orleans to a 103-74 win over Alcorn State on Wednesday in the Gulf Coast Classic.
The Privateers (8-2) took an early lead and bounced back from a loss to Southern Mississippi Tuesday in the first day of the tournament.
New Orleans led by as much as 23 points in the first half and Alcorn (1-9) never threatened after that. Alcorn lost its second straight game of the tournament.
James Parlow added 13 points for the Privateers, T.J. Worley scored 16, Ben Elias chipped in 15 and Kechan Myers put 11 on the board.
This was the first time New Orleans broke the 100-point barrier since a 103-69 win over Belhaven in 2005.
Richard Griffin led Alcorn with 24 points, James Kendrick added 12 and Jumane Reed scored 11.
• On Tuesday, J.C. Clark scored 21 points to lead Louisiana Tech to a 78-69 win over Alcorn State on Tuesday in the Gulf Coast Classic.
The win ended a six game losing streak for Tech.
Clark scored 14 of his points in the second half as the Bulldogs built on a 33-31 halftime lead. James Loe added 15 for the Bulldogs, while Alcorn’s Alex Owumi scored 24 points to lead the Braves and Anthony Ford added 23.