Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Harvey’s buzzer-beating three lifts UALR to win
OHIO VALLEY WOMEN UALR 45, TENN.-MARTIN 44
When Tia Harvey hustled over to the University of Arkansas- Little Rock bench with 3.3 seconds left Thursday, the 5-9 junior had a feeling something good was about to happen.
She couldn’t explain why, and nothing about her brief conversation with Trojan Coach Joe Foley made it any more likely that UALR would find a winner — especially with no timeouts left to advance the ball.
But after Seygan Robins made two free throws to give Tennessee-Martin the lead, it was up to Harvey to put her intuition to the test.
With four speedy dribbles down the right sideline and a running, hurled 25-foot three-pointer just before the horn, Harvey salvaged the Trojans’ Ohio Valley Conference debut, pushing UALR to a 45- 44 win against the Skyhawks at Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock.
Although Harvey’s game- winner ultimately proved decisive, the return of Sali Kourouma — the Trojans’ leading scorer last season — was arguably more critical. Kourouma scored 11 of her game-high 14 points before halftime, igniting an explosive 24-point second quarter that ultimately gave UALR the cushion it needed to hang on during an ugly second half on the offensive end.
“She played a lot more than I thought she would, to tell you the truth,” Foley said of Kourouma, who played 27 minutes after being away from the team for the entirety of the first semester due to visa issues that prevented the Malian from returning to the United States until earlier this month. “I looked at her [in the fourth quarter] and she was so tired, she couldn’t get up and down the floor. … I give her credit. She gutted it out and she tried and that’s all I could ask from her.”
The Trojans led 31-18 at halftime after closing the second quarter on a 9-1 run, but Tennesee- Martin (4- 8, 0-1 Ohio Valley) clawed back within four by the end of the third quarter and hung within a couple of possessions for nearly the entirety of the fourth quarter.
Much of that was a product of adjustments made by longtime Skyhawks Coach Kevin McMillian, who has scrimmaged against Foley’s teams for at least a decade — up until this year when the two knew their squads would meet twice in league play.
“I know what they do [defensively], but it doesn’t matter if you know what they do — they’re going to do it,” McMillian said of UALR. “The only thing I told [my team] at halftime was, ‘We can’t get out-toughed.’ … As the half unfolded, we kind of answered that challenge.”