Keena Mays continued her push for the Nancy Lieberman award with another strong showing in the SMU Women’s Basketball team’s 66-47 win over Cincinnati at Moody Coliseum Tuesday night.

The Mustangs improved to 13-7 on the season and 4-5 in the American Athletic Conference. SMU got off to a slow start, but once the team got going, SMU built a good enough lead to cruise to the win.

Although Cincinnati played SMU pretty much even in the second half, SMU head coach Rhonda Rompola couldn’t help, but see the differences in the way the team has played the last two games compared to their three games before that.

“We finished. Today we got a big enough lead that we were able to hold on because we didn’t play our best basketball in the second half,” Rompola said. “We didn’t get those leads against Rutgers and Lousiville.”

Mays had 15 of her 24 points in the first half to help the Mustangs build a 17-point halftime lead. The senior from Arlington finished with 24 points, eight assists and six steals.

The Mustangs constantly pressured the Bearcats into committing 22 turnovers and took advantage of those turnovers, scoring 18 points off of turnovers.

Mallory Singleton and Akil Simpson combined for 31 points and 13 rebounds to take some of the heat off of Mays around the perimeter, allowing Mays to have plenty of open looks on the night. Mays took advantage, going 4-of-7 from three-point range on the night.

“It helps a lot. Akil is pretty consistent every game as y’all can see, but like Rhonda said, Mallory did some good things today,” Mays said. “It just makes it easier on me when I don’t really have to score as much when we can get it going from the inside too.”

Following the men’s game against Memphis, the SMU Women’s Basketball team faces Temple on Feb. 1 at 3 p.m. in Moody Coliseum.