A tough season for Jacksonville State’s women ended with a tough loss in the first round of the Conference USA tournament.

The Gamecocks dropped a 55-53 matchup against Sam Houston in the first round of the CUSA tourney in Huntsville on Tuesday at the Von Braun Center, ending Jax State’s second season as a league member.

Jax State finished the year 10-20 overall and 4-15 against CUSA opponents.

“I think their kids wanted to win, our kids wanted to win,” Jax State coach Rick Pietri said. “I think their kids just wanted to win just a tad bit more, just a hair more, and that matters. They got a rebound on that end that we get. They don’t score, and we just didn’t. Then, Jesus returned it over 31 times. I mean, that’s a comedy of errors.”

A back-and-forth matchup was marred by a final 1:13 that saw Sam Houston score 4 points in 10 seconds off of a pair of turnovers, eliminating a 3-point lead for Jax State that it looked to carry to the final buzzer.

Jax State had a chance at a game-winning shot, but a tough look from 3-point range by Maria Sanchez Ponce fell short.

“Our girls totally understood what was at stake as far as that last-second shot,” Sam Houston coach Ravon Justice said. “We just wanted to make sure we didn’t foul, but the biggest component when we got off the floor was, ‘Hey, make sure everyone stays with their own man.’ I was excited because that’s just the growth of our program from four days ago.”

Turnovers plagued Jax State throughout the matchup, with the Gamecocks logging 31 as a team, with 10 coming in the fourth quarter.

Mobile native Elsie Harris led Jax State with 13 points in the loss, shooting 4-for-8 from the field and knocking down two of her three shots from beyond the arc. She was the lone Gamecock to score in double figures, with Ponce adding 8 points and 7 rebounds while Mya Barnes led the team with 10 rebounds.

“You need your whole team engaged, and we just didn’t have everybody engaged. It’s tough. It’s tough when people you count on don’t bring it. And then, like I said, I didn’t bring it. I made a bad call in the beginning in terms of what we were running. I should have different personnel on a called timeout.

“I did a bad job. I did a bad coaching job in the last two minutes, so I have to take that. That’s on me.”

Despite getting into tough foul trouble early, with seven of Sam Houston’s players totaling three or more fouls, three of the Bearkats’ five starters finished in double figures.

Nyla Inmon led Sam Houston with 17 points and 6 rebounds, while Fanta Kone had 15 points, 3 rebounds and 4 assists; both shot 6-for-14 from the field.

Whitney Dunn added 10 points and 6 rebounds for Sam Houston.

“We were just happy that our team could play for each other and we play hard,” Inmon said. “That’s half of the work is just playing hard. Some people do different roles, it is the fact that everybody played their role very, very well tonight.”

The loss ended the worst season for the program since the 2012-13 season, when Jax State went 1-27; Jax State went 10-18 in the 2015-16 season, with this year’s campaign adding two more losses to that mark.

This season saw four games that saw the Gamecocks fall by 4 or fewer points. Jax State rode a five-game losing streak into the matchup, with the lone win coming in a 68-55 victory over Louisiana Tech on Feb. 15.

“We’re an almost team; we’re almost good enough. We were almost good enough a lot,” Pietri said. “We were almost good enough at Liberty, we were almost good enough at Western Kentucky, we were almost good enough at Middle Tennessee, we were almost good enough today; we’re almost good enough a lot, and that’s the thing: we almost never were.

“Particularly from February on in terms of putting a game together, we put one game together, and that was the only win that we had since February. On that day, we put it all together. The people in the building that day, members of our team who were there, everybody was fully engaged. Everybody gave something positive that day, but that’s all we had. We got a bunch of almost, and that’s why the season ended the way it did, because we were just a team of almost.”

Sam Houston will face top-seeded Liberty in the conference quarterfinals on Wednesday at 11:30 a.m.

“I’m just excited to still be playing in March,” Justice said. “I thought my kids came out and competed so hard, we were very positive coming into the game. It was a very, very interesting game as far as the foul situation early on, but I was so proud of how my girls fought and stayed in the game, even though we were in foul trouble.”