USF Women's Basketball Wins 72-68 Over Stetson

It went down to the wire in the Sun Dome with Stetson’s Jama Sharp missing a three-pointer with seconds left to tie, and the Bulls escaped with a 72-68 win against a Stetson team they'd like to beat more easily. Courtney Williams led the Bulls, registering a double-double with 22 points and ten rebounds. Ariadna Pujol was the only other Bull in double digits, with 11 points on 4 for 10 shooting.

The Bulls started out 4-4 from three-point range... and went 1 for 23 to close the game. Freshman center Kate Weber got her first career start for the Bulls, and finished with three points, three rebounds, and two blocks in 17 minutes. Sophomore guard Shaleth Stringfield finished with a career high seven assists.

"We’ve shown that we can play with anybody in the country, but we can also lose to anybody in the country,” Bulls Coach Jose Fernandez said after the game. " It wasn’t pretty, but we got out of here with a win," which was important for a team that had lost their previous two games against FGCU and Clemson. A lot of that can be attributed to the Bulls effort on the offensive glass, where they picked up 20 caroms to just nine from Stetson.

The Hatters played pretty well and had three players register double digits.  Brianti Saunders matched Williams with 22 points on 6 -13 shooting. Sasha Sims chipped in 16 points on 6 -14 shooting, and Jama Sharp scored 12 points on 5-10 from the floor. Stetson committed 18 turnovers as a team, and the Bulls capitalized by scoring 22 points off Hatter miscues.

The Bulls travel to a still reeling Oklahoma State on Saturday to take on the #14 Cowgirls. To get a big RPI win on the road would be huge for a team still waiting to get last year's leading scorer Inga Orekhova back from knee surgery, but they'll need to shoot a lot better from deep to hang around.