Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Southern loses share of SWAC title; Texas Southern withdraws from tourney after brawl, sanctions

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana -- The Southwestern Athletic Conference took away Southern’s share of the conference regular-season title Monday night as it suspended seven Jaguars and eight Texas Southern players for their involvement in a brawl Saturday.

The suspended Southern players will be unavailable when the Jaguars play Grambling in a quarterfinal game in the SWAC tournament at noon Wednesday in the Toyota Center in Houston.

That leaves six Jaguars eligible to participate.

The Lady Tigers announced Monday night that they would not participate in the tournament because their suspensions left them incapable of fielding a full five-person lineup.

The altercation, which included cheerleaders and spectators, erupted with 12:37 left in the game and Southern leading 51-49 in a showdown for first place in the regular-season finale. After the officials imposed mandatory ejections for each player who left the benches during the skirmish, the game was declared a double forfeit because neither team could field five players.



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