Kingsville - The Javelina women’s basketball team rallied from a 14-point second half deficit but fell short to Southwestern Oklahoma State in Lone Star Conference crossover action Thursday night at the Kleberg Bank Court 63-60.
Texas A&M-Kingsville falls to 3-9 while Southwestern Oklahoma improves to 5-7.
Lana Toki led three Javelinas in double figures with 18 points and nine rebounds. Dyana Bullinger had 13 and Angela Trotter had 10. Point guard Kayla Naylor added eight assists and four steals while turning the ball over just one time in 37 minutes.
“We played hard,” Texas A&M-Kingsville head coach Dina Kangas said. “We got ourselves in a little bit of a hole, but we hit a couple big shots to make it close. It was nice that we could try to make it a game but it didn’t work for us tonight.”
Leading 24-18 at the half, Southwestern Oklahoma opened the second half on a 13-3 run.
Texas A&M- Kingsville trailed 43-29 with 12:46 left in the game and was still down by 11 56-45 with only 4:05 left in regulation when the Javelinas put together a 6-0 run. Angela Trotter and Ali Scott connected on a jump shots then Trotter then scored on a lay-up to cut the lead to five at 56-51 with 1:04 remaining.
Dyana Bullinger, Jasmine June and Felicia Soza each hit 3-point shots in a span of 23 seconds, but the Bulldogs held on to the lead by hitting six consecutive free throws and led 62-60.
Grace Anne Jones hit one free throw, but missed the second with 13 seconds left; the Javelinas had a shot to tie the game in the final seconds, but couldn’t hit their shot.
“We’re young and we’re only going to keep getting better every game,” Kangas said. “We just need a couple of our team leaders to step up, get some rebounds and shoot better.”
After shooting just 22 percent in the first half, the Javelinas caught on fire in the second half, hitting nearly 52 percent of their shots.
The Javelinas opened the game with a 5-4 lead less than three minutes into the game but the Bulldogs came back as they opened a 7-0 run with 13:10 remaining in the opening half.
Soza broke the Bulldog run with two consecutive free throws. On the Bulldogs following drive Jasmine June took a steal that was followed by a Soza three-pointer. Two scoring drives later Toki put up two more points for the Javelinas with 11:04 to play. The drive was finally stopped when Oldham connected for two points with 10:51 to play in the first half.
The Bulldogs held a 16-14 lead until Rosalyn Robbins scored after a timeout to tie the game at 16- all. Naylor then hit a pair of free throws to give the Javelinas an 18-16 advantage with 6:12 to play.
Bailey connected on a wild lay-up on the following series to tie the game at 18. Bailey followed that with a three-pointer and when Kelsey Gee connected on one of two free throws that gave the Bulldogs a 24-18 lead that they took into halftime.
The Javelinas shot a little better than 22 percent by the end of the first half while the Bulldogs connected for 37 percent. .
The Texas A&M- Kingsville women return to action Saturday at 2 p.m. as they host Cameron University (0-11) in Kingsville.
