LAFAYETTE – The Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns women's basketball team won their 10th straight game at EK Long Gymnasium after defeating Stetson University, 56-47 in the WBI quarterfinals Saturday evening.
Cajuns (23-10) Senior Keke Veal paced the offense with 17 points to go with a team-high six rebounds.
"We didn't shoot the ball well in the first half, but we came back in the second half," Ragin' Cajuns head coach Garry Brodhead said. "What we do is predicated on pressing on defense, which also helps create a lot better shots for us offensively."
Junior Sylvana Okde added 12 points off the bench on 4-of-7 shooting from the floor. Her four three-pointers were a season high and bumped her career total to 162, good for fourth place on UL's all-time list, passing Bernette Tolston.
"Silk [Sylvana Okde] came in and opened up the offense and created some offense for us," Brodhead said. "We always talk about taking advantage of the opportunity and she did. When Keke [Veal] went down [to injury] we went right back to Silk and I thought she did a good job."
The Cajuns fell behind, 14-4 after the first quarter. The two foes traded buckets for the first four possessions of the second quarter before Stetson grew its lead to 11 at 20-9 with 5:42 to go.
A three-pointer by Okde at the 4:26 mark pulled UL to within eight. She deposited another trey with 2:55 left to make it 22-15.
Freshman Breionne Cooper split a pair of free throws to cut the deficit to 24-19 with 39 seconds remaining in the first half, but Stetson's Myka Johnson-Matthews nailed a jumper with 14 seconds left to give the Hatters a 26-19 advantage at halftime.
Back-to-back buckets from senior Brooklyn Arceneaux and sophomore Jodi Quinn made it 26-23 to start the third quarter.
Trailing 28-23 with 7:45 remaining in the third, sophomore forward Simone Fields and Veal both made layups (Veal's coming on a fastbreak) to close the gap to 28-27.
Louisiana tied the game at the 6:36 and 5:59 marks of the third and did not take their first lead until 5:26 stood on the clock. Veal's three-pointer gave the Cajuns a 33-30 advantage.
Brianti Saunders answered with a three-pointer of her own to knot the game at 33-33, but seven straight points went to the Cajuns, who took a 40-33 lead with 1:46 remaining in the third stanza.
By the close of the third quarter, the Cajuns had secured a 43-35 lead thanks to a 24-9 scoring route in the stanza.
Louisiana's lead never dipped below four points for the remainder of the game. Veal tallied 15 of her 17 points in the second half, while Fields added seven points and Quinn chipped in five points following halftime.
Senior guard Kia Wilridge came up with a team-high five steals, one shy of her season high.
The Cajuns shot 48% (12-of-25) in the second half as opposed to just 17.6% (6-of-34) in the first half.
The Cajuns will match up with Youngstown State in the WBI semifinals this Wednesday, March 23 at 5 p.m. at the Cajundome.