Kingsville - Despite a valiant second half effort, the Texas A&M-Kingsville women's basketball team lost, 65-50, to the No.11 West Texas A&M Lady Buffs.
The Javelinas equaled WT's second-half scoring output, and out-scored the Lady Buffs in the fourth quarter, but couldn't dig themselves out of a 15-point first-half hole. The loss leaves one home game on TAMUK's schedule: a Saturday, 1:00 p.m. matchup against the Eastern New Mexico Greyhounds.
"WT is a handful," Head Coach
Michael Madrid said. "They get to their spots really well, their players that need to take shots take shots, their players that don't need to take shots don't take shots. I thought we started out with some energy, and then as the game kind of progressed, I thought just their team just sort of took over and put their stamp on it through the first half.
The game started as a back-and-forth contest, with early buckets from freshman forward
Justine Aguilar, redshirt juniors
Kaylee Howell and
Kaycee Groves, and freshman guard
Jade Perez, helping to force six different lead changes in the game in just the first 4:30. WT responded to Kingsville's final lead in that stretch, however, by closing out the first quarter on an 11-0 run.
The visitors then extended their lead to double figures in the second quarter, not allowing Kingsville back within 10 for the rest of the game. In spite of their deficit, the Javelinas played inspired basketball in the second half, putting together multiple 7-0 runs (one each in the third and fourth quarters), and out-scoring West Texas 17-15 in the final frame.
"I'm super proud of our team at the end, that group at the end played hard and fought and created some turnovers and things like that," Madrid said.
Groves led the team in points, rebounds, and assists, posting 12, seven, and five respectively, to go along with a pair of steals. Just one point behind her, though, was redshirt freshman forward
Caitlyn Benally, who scored a career-high 11 points, and sophomore forward
Thalia Daniels, who put up nine points on 4-of-5 shooting.
TAMUK will now look ahead to the Greyhounds, who represent the team's final home game of the year, which will tip off at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday.
"It'll be a completely different game on Saturday, Eastern will get up and press, super athletic, score high-low, so we're going to have to guard a lot of different things," Madrid said. "Final home game of the year, so hopefully we get a good crowd. Hope some people come out and watch us play, watch the men play, ane watch this group play."
