Box Score San Antonio - The Kingsville women's basketball team fought a back-and-forth battle against Oklahoma Baptist in its opening game of the St. Mary's Thanksgiving Classic, losing to the Bison 47-48.
Though TAMUK played suffocating defense, the team turned the ball over 22 times and dropped to 4-2 on the season.
"We thought defensively, we were pretty solid, both teams weren't great offensively so I don't know that it was great defense either," Head Coach
Michael Madrid said. "We were very stagnant. Twenty-two turnovers that were unforced. Turnovers that we could avoid but we made poor decisions with the ball. We also got to the point where players on the floor started forcing things and didn't want to shoot altogether."
Kingsville's defense held the Bison to 29% shooting from the field and 24% from behind the long line. The team also forced 17 turnovers and allowed just two OKB players to make more than two field goals. The Bison, however, shot 33 threes in the contest, 17 more than the Javelinas attempted, making eight of them.
"We wanted to run their players off the three-point line and force them to become drivers," Madrid. "Late in the game, we over-helped and left shooters behind us open. Credit to OBU for finding the open man."
Right from the opening tip, the Javelinas started hot, particularly on the defensive end. Kingsville held OKB to just two first-quarter points, building as much as a 13-point lead early in the second frame. As it has been for much of the early season, balanced scoring was a focus for TAMUK, who had six different players with a made field goal through the first quarter and a half.
The second quarter, however, was where the Bison made their move. They made six triples in the second 10 minutes of play, scoring 20 in the frame and evening up the game at 22 going into the halftime lockerroom.
After halftime, Kingsville found its offense, making six of its nine shots in the third quarter, led by eight points from junior forward
Shelby Ray and five from senior forward
Janessa Payne, who finished as the team's two leading scorers in the contest, with a combined 18 points.
The fourth quarter is where the game got away from the Javelinas, who turned the ball over eight times, and scored just eight points, in the final frame.
"We just need to play better offensively," Madrid said. "We weren't smart with the ball and didn't execute offensively. More importantly, we gave up a number of offensive rebounds."
The team will have a chance to finish the weekend on a high note when they play the Shippensburg Raiders at 2 p.m. tomorrow - it will be the Javelinas' final matchup before beginning conference play next weekend.
