ULM’s women basketball team lost a hard-fought contest in enemy territory, losing to the Ragin’ Cajuns 52-45.

ULM’s loss comes down to one thing, offense. The ball seemed to stick and not move around consistently. ULM fought hard on the defensive end, but the effort was not enough to pull out a road win.

Defensively, the Warhawks had a solid outing and were able to do good things on that side. ULM had five steals as a team with three coming from Tiara Malone.

Lafayette was held to a poor shooting afternoon, shooting 37.5 percent from the field and 36.4 percent from behind the arc. ULL’s leading scorers both had only 12 points and ULM forced                        18 turnovers.

Arsula Clark led the team in points and rebounds with 16 and 11 respectively. Diamond Brooks tied her season and career high in points with seven.

Unfortunately, this is where the positives end for the team. While she did have seven points and three steals, Malone only hit two out of her 12 shots.

Clark shot a decent 41 percent going 7-17 from the field. However, she managed only a single assist in her 35 minutes, finishing with more turnovers than assists.

ULM struggled mightily with scoring this game. ULM shot a very low 28 percent from the field (18-64) and eight percent on 3-point shots (2-24). Both are a season low for the Warhawks. This signaled the end from ULM as they were never able to take the lead in the     second half.

“It’s hard to fault the effort defensively, we held them to 52 points on their home floor… if you’re going to struggle offensively, there’s very little margin for error on the defensive side,” head coach Jeff Dow said in an interview with ULM athletics.

At the end of the day, basketball is about putting the ball in the basket, something ULM was not able to do. Making threes, getting easier shots and spreading the ball around more may help with the offensive effort in future games.

ULM cut the gap to three once again in the fourth only for ULL to go on another run as they scored eight of the next 10 points to put the game away.

“You go two out of 24, that’s going to make it tough. A lot of those were pretty good looks…but if you’re not hitting threes, then how else can you impact the game,” Dow said.

The Warhawks are now 7-9 overall and only 1-4 in the Sun Belt. ULM continues its road trip as they visit Troy on Thursday with tip-off at 6 p.m.