CHARLESTON, Ill. – Jacksonville State's women's basketball team dropped a tough 55-52 game at Eastern Illinois on Thursday night inside Lantz Arena.
 
It was a career night for redshirt-junior McKenna Lawrence who carried the Gamecocks (6-10, 2-3 Ohio Valley Conference) in the opening half. But the Panthers (10-6, 4-1 OVC) found an answer for the Evans, Ga., native, in the second half as the edged out Jax State for their fourth conference win.
 
In her first career start, Lawrence set a new career-high in points in just the first 20 minutes of action before finishing with a game-high 15. All five of her buckets came from beyond the arc for nearly half of JSU's 11 treys on the evening. Freshman Nekiyah Thompson added a pair of threes to match her career high with 11 points, as did redshirt-senior Destiney Elliott who was the third Gamecock in double figures with 10 points.
 
JSU shot just 27-percent as a team, but outside of Lawrence, Thompson and Elliott, were just 7-of-39 (.178) from the floor while struggling to keep up with EIU. While redshirt-junior Chloe Long failed to score, she continued her dominant start to league play with another team-high eight rebounds.
 
Lawrence's big night started fast with consecutive triples for JSU's first six points of the game. Taylor Hawks added another three-pointer late in the period for JSU's only points in the quarter as they trailed 14-9 after one.  
 
Another long scoring drought in the second was snapped when Lawrence came through again with back-to-back threes to give JSU its first lead at 21-19 with just over two minutes to play in the half. Unfortunately, EIU ended the period on a 7-0 run to take a 26-21 lead into the break.
 
The Gamecocks slowly clawed back in the third, finally evening things at 30-30 on a trey by Elliott, but similar to the second quarter, the home team responded with another big run to go back up by eight. Trailing by nine late in the fourth, Elliott's second three of the night cut it to 50-44 with 2:07 remaining in what would be JSU's last surge of the night.
 
Threes in the final minute by Thompson brought JSU all the way back to within three at the very end, but the Gamecocks didn't have time for a final shot after a missed free throw. The charity stripe was one of many things not favorable for the visitors on the night as JSU finished 1-of-2 for the game after Thompson's intential last-second miss. Meanwhile, the Panthers were 14-for-18 at the line. JSU tried to make up the difference from beyond the perimeter setting a new program record with 45 three-point attempts on the night, breaking the previous mark of 39 set against Murray State in 2005.
 
JSU's road weekend continued on Saturday at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville at 1 o'clock.