The loss dropped the Lady Toppers to 18-8 and 11-2 in the Sun Belt, momentarily finding themselves in a tie in the loss column with Arkansas State atop the Sun Belt East Division standings. The Lady Raiders improved to 18-8 and 10-3 in the league.
Western spotted the Lady Raiders four points to start the game, but finally got on the board on a Tiffany Porter-Talbert layup with 17:44 on the clock. The clubs traded points before a Tia Stovall layup at the 16:32 mark started a 10-0 Lady Raider run to open up a 16-4 lead with 14:03 left in the half. Crystal Kelly stopped the bleeding with a layup and Leslie Logsdon knocked down a three to cut the MTSU lead down to seven (16-9). Stovall stopped the bleeding with a basket, but Krystal Gardner knocked down a free throw, and Kelly got a layup to make it an 18-12 game 12:00 remaining. That basket also gave Kelly the WKU record for points by a freshman, breaking Lillie Mason’s record of 488 set during the 1981-82 season. Unfortunately Western could get no closer as MTSU was able to build its lead back out to 14 points (29-15) on a Ditte Jakobsen layup with 5:40 left before haftime.
The rest of the half would belong to Western Kentucky, however, as an 8-0 Lady Topper run made it a 29-23 game with 3:23 on the clock. Chrissy Givens got a jumper to push the lead back to eight, but two straight Logsdon jumpers made it a 31-27 game with 53 seconds on the clock. But Middle Tennessee would get the final points of the half as Lakira Boyd hit a three with 29 seconds left to send the Lady Raiders into the locker room with a 34-27 lead.
Kelly paced the Lady Toppers with 10 points in the first half, while Logsdon added seven. Givens led MTSU with 10 while Stovall tossed in nine in the opening 20 minutes. The Lady Toppers knocked down just eight shots in the opening half, but stayed in the game thanks to going 10-for-12 at the free-throw line.
After the teams swapped threes to open the half, the Lady Toppers got a Kelly layup to spark a 9-4 run that got WKU back within two (41-39) on a Kelly three-point play with 15:14 remaining. The Lady Raiders would answer, however, scoring 14 straight and 16 of the next 18 blow the game open and make it a 59-41 contest with 9:25 to play. MTSU built the lead as high as 22 points with 5:23 remaining, but Western scored seven straight to cut the deficit to 67-52 on an Ashley Butler three-point play with 4:24 remaining. That would be as close as WKU would get as Middle Tennessee scored the next 11 to build a 26-point advantage with just 1:19 remaining. Western could only get a three from Tifany Zaragoza in final seconds before dropping the 24-point decision.
Kelly finished with 15 points in 28 minutes of action, going 7-for-7 at the free throw line. Butler also added 11 points off the bench. Stovall paced four Lady Raiders in double figures with a game-high 21 points.
The Lady Toppers wrap up the regular season at home on Monday (Feb. 28), hosting Florida International at 7 p.m. (CST). Prior to the game, Western will honor its two seniors — Leslie Logsdon and Camryn Whitaker.
