CONWAY — On Senior Day in the Farris Center on Saturday, it was junior forward Kierra Jordan who carried the Sugar Bears for most of the day in what was largely a tightly contested battle against Stephen F. Austin.
Until the fourth quarter.
In the last quarter of the last home game of their careers, the Central Arkansas seniors took control to close out their final game in the Farris Center with a 70-58 win over the Ladyjacks, keeping their spot atop the Southland Conference standings heading into next week's regular season finale.
Down five at the half, the Sugar Bears (23-4, 15-2 Southland) outscored the Ladyjacks (21-6, 12-4) 20-12 in the third quarter led by 10 from Jordan, who finished with 21 – all in the first three quarters –and a game-high 11 rebounds for her third double-double of the season, to take a 45-42 lead into the final period.
Nearly midway through the fourth, the Ladyjacks held a slim 1-point advantage at 53-52 following a Taylor Ross layup with 5:26 to go.
And that would be the last Ladyjack lead of the day.
Over the next 4:36, the Sugar Bears' all-conference senior guard tandem of Maggie Proffitt and Brianna Mullins combined to score the game's next 12 points to build an 11-point lead with under a minute to go before six free throws from fellow senior Taylor Strickland and junior Taylor Baudoin down the stretch sealed the win.
Proffitt, who was held to four points in the first half on 1-of-7 shooting, poured in 14 in the fourth quarter – nearly outscoring SFA, which had 16 – and had 20 in a second half in which the Sugar Bears outscored the Ladyjacks 45-28. The UCA Division I-era record holder in 3-point field goals, Proffitt hit four more on Saturday – all in the second half, as she went 4-for-7 to extend her career total to 254, which ranks 4th in Southland Conference history.
In all, the Sugar Bear seniors combined for 19 of the team's 25 points in the fourth quarter, and Proffitt and Raquel Logan each grabbed two rebounds with Logan also coming up with a pair of steals.
The win gives the Sugar Bears a regular-season sweep of the Ladyjacks and assures them one of the top two seeds in the Southland tournament in Katy, Texas in two weeks. Entering the final week of the season, the Sugar Bears are tied with Abilene Christian in the loss column with two each, with Lamar just behind at 13-3. ACU is ineligible for postseason play as it is in its final season of its four-year Division I reclassification period, leaving Lamar as the only threat to the Sugar Bears for the top seed.
Just as they did in the first meeting in Nacogdoches, the Sugar Bears dominated the glass on Saturday, outrebounding SFA 42-26, including 11 offensive rebounds as they held a 20-7 advantage over SFA in second-chance points. Jordan and Baudoin each had five on the offensive end and Logan four. SFA, meanwhile, was held to just seven offensive rebounds, four coming from Adrienne Lewis. Baudoin and Logan each finished with 8 rebounds total, and Baudoin pitched in with 13 points. Angel Williams, who spent much of her 24 minutes of action applying pressure to SFA's Taylor Ross on the defensive end, led the team with five assists on the offensive end. SFA had just one assist in the game on its 17 field goals.
SFA, which came in averaging 76.3 points per game for the season and 79.2 in conference play, was held to its second-lowest point total of the season with only their 48 in a loss at Texas A&M on Nov. 20 being lower.
It is the third time this season that both Jordan and Proffitt have each scored 20 in game, with the Sugar Bears winning those three games – with wins over Houston and Houston Baptist – by a combined 57 points.
The Sugar Bear senior class leaves the Farris Center with 49 wins in the building and now has 86 overall to date in their careers – the most for any Central Arkansas class in the program's D-I era.
They will look to add to that total, wrap up the No. 1 seed for the tournament, and earn their second Southland regular season championship next Saturday in Natchitoches, La. when they meet up with Northwestern State, a team the Sugar Bears defeated 76-43 on Jan. 2.
