Kingsville - In a back-and-forth, tight ballgame, the Texas A&M - Kingsville women's basketball team forced three straight turnovers from the Cameron Aggies to hold for a 71-69 win, its third-straight.

The win is the Javelinas' fourth in their last five ballgames, and starts a streak of four straight home games on the right foot. Both teams shot above 50% from the field and 40% from three and ended in Kingsville's largest scoring total since a win over West Texas A&M on December 15th.

"That was probably fun for the fans, but from a coach's standpoint, my gosh that was stressful," Head Coach Michael Madrid said. "I just probably lost about five years on my life."

Though junior forward Shelby Ray led the team in scoring with 11 points, the team was without her in the game's closing minutes. Among others, freshman Addisyn Parker stepped up in a big way, knocking down a pair of third-quarter threes and getting back-to-back layups in the fourth to score a career-high 10 points on just five shots. She also came up with a steal in the game's final seconds, securing the win. 

"She loves basketball and she had just a tremendous attitude," Madrid said. "She hasn't played a whole lot as a freshman, so easily she could sit on the end of the bench and pout, but she comes in every day with a tremendous mentality. I've talked about this a number of times, we tell our players you never know when it's your time and you gotta step up and make big shots, and we have a ton of confidence in her and her ability to score the basketball, so it was fun to see her play big minutes."

The Javelinas put three in double-figures scoring the ball, with senior forward Veyda Lake's 10 points joining Ray and Parker. Ray had six boards while senior forward Janessa Payne added five to help Kingsville win the rebounding battle by five, 30-25. Much like the team's scoring, it's passing was a team effort as well, with the Javelinas doing a great job sharing the basketball throughout the matchup. Three different players had at least three assists, led by senior guard Abby Bala, and six finished with multiple. 

Kingsville started the game red hot, taking a 23-12 lead after the first quarter. Once the Aggies settled into the game, however, they began to claw back into it. By the time the midway point of the third quarter came around, they had claimed their first lead of the ballgame. From there, the contest became a dogfight, with neither team yielding an inch in the back-and-forth battle.

"They're a tough team, they've got shooters, they're hard to guard, they're small, their inside's really good," Madrid said. "Just a hard-fought conference win and it almost was one of those deals where you hate to see one team lose, but thankfully it was us that won."

Despite the great offensive numbers tallied by the visitors from Cameron, it was TAMUK's calling card - its defense - that won it the ballgame. The team forced 18 total turnovers from the Aggies, including three straight in the final 1:02 of gametime that helped the Javelinas hold on to their two point lead and secure the victory.

TAMUK will be back in the SPEC for another home game on Saturday when the Javelinas host Oklahoma Christian at 1 p.m.
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