TAMPA, Fla. ? The University of South Florida women's basketball team certainly kept the most exciting home game ? or any game for that matter ? of the season for last as it defeated Pittsburgh in a thrilling 65-64 come-from-behind win in its regular season home finale at the Sun Dome Saturday night. The win also marked the Bulls' first-ever win over Pitt in five games.
Shantia Grace hit a driving layup with five seconds remaining for the game winner. The Panthers' Shavonte Zellous, who was being tightly contested by one of USF's two senior's ChiChi Okpaleke, misfired in her attempt at desperation shot with one-tenth of a second remaining.
The Bulls (14-14, 4-11 BIG EAST), who kept themselves in the hunt for the 12th and final spot for the upcoming BIG EAST Conference Tournament, March 8-11 in Hartford, looked at the beginning of the game like their season, for the most part, would end tonight. After Jazmine Sepulveda scored the first two points of the game (19-9, 9-6 BIG EAST) on a lay-up with 19:18 on the clock, the Panthers would proceed to score 18 unanswered points to take their biggest lead of the game.
USF, who would not score another field goal until Melissa Dalembert connected on a lay-up with 14:03 left in the half, would find themselves down by double figures for the majority of the first stanza. After cutting the lead to 10, 28-18, with 9:08 left before the break the Bulls would go on a 10-4 run to cut the edge to four points, 32-28, with on a lay-up by Okpaleke with 1:10 left in the half.
Pittsburgh would eventually take a six-point lead, 34-28, into the locker room at the break.
The Panthers would come out in the second half and push their lead back to double figures, just under two minutes in, when Zellous hit a jumper to make the score 39-28.
After trading baskets for nearly the next six minutes, USF would finally cut the lead to under double digits for good when Porche Grant hit the second of two free throws to make the score 47-38 with 12:15 left in the game.
USF would eventually fight its way back cut the lead to one-point three times in the final 7:40 without tying the game or taking the lead. It took a freshman ? Gianna Messina ? on a night set aside for seniors to tie the contest when she hit two free throws with 37 seconds left to knot the score at 63-all.
After the Bulls' Jessica Lawson fouled Pittsburgh's Marcedes Walker with 15 seconds left the Panthers' senior would just hit the first of two free throws allowing Grace to perform her heroics.
On the night, Grace led the way for USF with 17 points and six assists in 40 minutes of action. It marked her sixth straight complete game and her eighth in her last 11 games.
Messina added 13 points and Sepulveda chipped in with 12 points in the win.
The Bulls shot 40.4 percent (21-52) from the field in the win. It was the first time since the DePaul game (47.5 percent) that USF hit for better than 40 percent. However, almost more importantly, the Bulls finally got production from their bench outscoring the Pitt reserves 20-7.
Walker led Pittsburgh with 17 points and Xenia Stewart and Zellous added 13 points apiece.
USF will close out its regular season on Monday night at Marquette at 9 p.m. The game can be seen live on College Sports Television on DirecTV channel 610 or Dish Network channel 152. The contest can also be heard live on 1010 Sports with Garrett Walvoord calling the action.
Official Statement on last play made by officials Eric Brewton, Sue Blauch, Chad Titus.
Question: What happened on the last play? Did time expire before anything happened or was it a block?
There was no foul called by the officials near the expiration of time to end the game. Therefore, by Rule 2.13.5.a, the play is not reviewable. Article 5 states that the monitor may not be used to “determine who committed a foul or whether a foul occurred.”
