Silver City, NM - The Texas A&M-Kingsville women's basketball team began the longest road trip of its conference season with a complete, 64-54 win over the Western New Mexico Mustangs on Thursday night.
Two Javelinas scored 14-plus points and four grabbed at least eight rebounds as the team put down numerous comeback attempts to secure its fourth Lone Star Conference victory of the year in a game in which the squad never trailed. TAMUK dominated both the rebound battle (44-18) and the points in the paint (44-20), dished out more assists than the Mustangs, and out-shot WNM from the field, three, and the free-throw line.
"We did a solid job initially of getting the ball inside and playing together out of the opening tip," Head Coach
Michael Madrid said.
Led in the scoring department by redshirt junior forward
Kaylee Howell and freshman guard Jadeyn Perez, Kingsville shot exactly 50% (28-of-56) from the field. Howell scored a team-high 15 points on 7-of-9 shooting from the field to go along with a game-high nine rebounds, tying her teammate, sophomore forward
Thalia Daniels, who nabbed nine of her own to go along with six points, two blocks, and two steals. Perez notched 14 points on 6-of-11 shooting from the field and 2-of-4 from three. Howell and Daniels were helped out on the glass by sophomore guard
Addisyn Parker and redshirt junior guard
Kaycee Groves who each grabbed eight rebounds.
Kingsville got off to a red-hot start, a blistering 66.7% (10-of-15) from the field in the first quarter and nabbing a 21-7 lead through the first ten minutes.
The Mustangs found their footing in the second quarter, and came out swinging. They cut Kingsville's lead in half, down to seven, before a big-time response from the young Javelina squad. TAMUK closed the half on a 9-2 run, with buckets from Parker, Howell, and Groves pushing Kingsville's lead back up to 14 heading into the halftime break.
That trend continued in the second half as Western's offense scored 21 points in the third quarter. The home team cut the Javelinas' lead to as low as five in the third and got it down to single digits again in the fourth but Kingsville came up with responses time and time again. With WNM threatening one final time, a 6-0 run from TAMUK in the final moments put the game away for good.
"They went on runs because we either turned it over or took a bad shot," Madrid said. "We go away from what worked and got sloppy which led to them going on some runs."
The Javelinas will now head south and wrap up their weekend road trip with a 1:00 p.m. contest against Sul Ross St. on Saturday.
