NEW ORLEANS - The seventh-seeded Coastal Carolina women's basketball team ran away with a 74-55 win over No. 10 Georgia State in Tuesday's first round of the 2018 Sun Belt Women's Basketball Championship from Lakefront Arena.

Coastal (17-13) advances to Thursday's quarterfinal round, where it will face No. 2 Texas State (21-8) at 5:00 p.m. (CT). Georgia State ends its season with an 8-22 overall record.

Tuesday's game was similar to the first time these teams met this season on Jan. 13. In the first matchup, Coastal claimed a double-digit lead at halftime after outscoring GSU 18-5 in the second quarter. This time around, the Chants outscored the Panthers 22-6 in the second quarter to lead by 15 points at the break. Coastal held onto its double-figure lead for the remainder of regulation as it closed out the win.

Five Chants scored in double figures in the winning effort, with Jas Adams' 16 points leading the way. Her team-leading performance moved her into 11th place among Coastal's all-time career scorers with 1,184 points.

Kaylin West scored 15 points, followed by Breelyn Blanding with 13. Janae Camp had a career night with 11 points, and Naheria Hamilton collected her ninth double-double of the season with 10 points and a game-high 15 rebounds.

The Chants held a 37-30 advantage in rebounds, and further dominated down low by outscoring the Panthers 34-20 in the paint.

GSU's Kierra Henry led the game with 18 points, including 11 in the first quarter. Janessa Murphy added 15 points, and K.K. Williams rounded out the Panthers' double-digit scorers with 13 points.

A tightly-contested first quarter saw Coastal and Georgia State tied three times as the two sides fought to gain an advantage. Henry opened the game hot for the Panthers, scoring 11 points on 4-of-5 from the field with a trio of 3-pointers. Henry only received four points from her teammates, however, allowing Coastal to keep pace. The Chants were buoyed by a stretch of eight unanswered points in the opening frame, with Janae Camp and Breelyn Blanding combining for six of those eight points.

Coastal began the second quarter trailing by one point, but quickly overtook the lead as Adams started to heat up. The senior guard drained a pair of 3's early in the quarter, and scored eight points as part of a 13-4 Coastal run over the frame's first four minutes. West was the Chants' leading scorer in the quarter with 10 points, shooting 4-of-6 from the field with a pair of 3-pointers. Coastal limited GSU to shooting 16 percent from the field in the second, and held the Panthers scoreless for a stretch of six minutes.

The Chants continued to pour it on in the third quarter as they scored a game-high 28 points. Coastal opened the quarter on a 15-4 run over the first five minutes, and later scored seven straight points to take a 30-point lead, its largest of the game.

GSU outscored Coastal in the final quarter, but could not manage to trim the margin lower than 16 points.

Tuesday's win was Coastal's first in a conference tournament since 2013-14, when the Chants defeated Charleston Southern in the opening round of the Big South Conference Championship.

Coastal Carolina Notes
• Coastal had five players in double digit scoring. Hamilton (10 pts), Blanding (13pts), Adams (16 pts), West (15 pts), Camp (11 pts)
• Senior Jas Adams hit four threes and was able to steal the ball four times while dishing five assists.
• Coastal breaks into the second round of the Sun Belt Championship for the first time after being eliminated in the first round last year against App State.
• Freshman Janae Camp was able to achieve a career high 11 points while shooting 5-7 from the field and grabbing eight rebounds.

Georgia State Notes
• Junior Kierra Henry scored 18 points while shooting 50 percent (3-6) from three-point range.
• Junior K.K. Williams scored 13 points and shot a perfect 6-6 free throws.

Quotes

Coastal Carolina Head Coach Jaida Williams
Opening Statement:
“First, I’d like to say that I’m extremely proud of our team for coming together and pulling out their first Sun Belt Conference Tournament victory.  I thought their focus was awesome.  I thought that their energy coming into the game and their intention to follow the game plan was the best that I’ve seen all year, so I’m really proud of us for pulling out a victory.”

What did you do differently in the second quarter?
“I felt like our student-athletes settled in a little bit.  There were a bit of nerves coming into this game, especially when you hold a higher seed and there’s an expectation there, but I felt like in the second quarter the nerves settled in, and our team was able to get into a flow.”

Georgia State Head Coach Sharon Baldwin
Opening Statement:
"Coastal was the better team today. I thought that our team continued to fight, but we go through phases where we struggle to score and I think that was true today.  We have to learn other ways to score.  We score from the free-throw line usually about 20 points a game.  We started to get to the free-throw line later in the game, but we have to do that for 40 minutes.  I was proud we didn't go down.  We could have been beat worse.  They have a very good basketball team.  They are very good defensively.  And we struggled putting the ball in the basket."

Like you said, in the second quarter, you guys struggled to put the ball in the basket.  Do you attribute that to their defense, or was it just not falling for you?
"I think it was a mixture. I do think their defense is very good.  I think we were having a hard time getting some open looks, but we also did miss some easy open looks.  We weren't always running the plays we needed to run or getting the ball where it needed to be."

You said that when you guys were down in the second half, you didn’t quit.  Can you expand on that?
“This team has been through a lot of adversity all year long.  The toughest thing is going into the locker room and seeing Jada Lewis, who is a great player, crying so hard because she couldn’t help us.  We keep fighting and we’ve got just three guards.  I’m proud of that.  We’ve got our point guard coming back from an Achilles, our two guard came back from an ACL less than a year ago and they are having to play like 35-40 minutes per game.  Have never been in a situation like this.  But they continue to fight.  We beat Troy last week and lost to South Alabama by one and I thought we were a little bit outmatched today, but we continued to fight and for that I am proud."