SAN ANTONIO, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women's basketball team suffered a tough non-conference loss on Tuesday evening, faltering late and falling on the road against UTSA by a final score of 62-43.
The struggles in the in-state matchup against UTSA continued for the Islanders (3-2), who dropped their ninth consecutive contest to the Roadrunners (4-1) dating back to February 2010. The loss also marked the second in a row for the team after coming out of the gates with three consecutive victories to open the 2024-25 season.
From the opening tip, the two teams came ready to play on the defensive end, with the respective offenses combining to muster up just 23 total points in the first quarter. The first punch of the night was thrown by UTSA in the form of a 14-3 run to open the game, but thanks to some early fouls that brought the bonus in play very quickly, A&M-Corpus Christi was able to claw the deficit down to five by the end of the frame with six straight points coming solely from the free-throw line.
The Islanders were finally able to take the lid off the basket once the second period rolled around, starting with a pair of three pointers from senior
Jaeda Whitner. From here, the team ripped off an 8-0 run to take its first lead of the day, scoring on a trio of buckets from graduate
Paige Allen and then a converted jumper from senior
Tymberlin Criswell. This advantage for A&M-Corpus Christi would grow to as much as seven at its largest point, and after some back-and-forth play, it would settle in at one going into the half.
In similar fashion to their last outing against Baylor, however, the latter stages of the game were not kind to the Islanders, as they struggled mightily on offense throughout the second half and lost their lead as a result. The third quarter was particularly rough, as the team managed just three total points in the period while shooting 1-11 from the field and turning the ball over 10 times. At the same time, the Roadrunners put together their highest-scoring quarter of the day with 18 points, a stretch that placed the home team in firm control of the game for the rest of the evening.
For the second game in a row, the Islanders were doomed by their inability to hold onto the ball, coughing it up a total of 27 times and surrendering a whopping 26 points in transition off of those turnovers. This enabled UTSA to get up 27 more shots on the day, a disparity that tipped the numbers game too far away from A&M-Corpus Christi despite its defense holding the Roadrunners to just 32 percent shooting from the field.
The strongest individual performance of the night for the Islanders came from Allen, who scoring 10 points on 5-10 shooting while grabbing six rebounds and recording four steals for the third consecutive game. This was the Kansas City native's fourth time scoring in double figures in five games this season, and it placed her just six points away from reaching 1,000 for her career. Right behind Allen in scoring at nine points was both Whitner and graduate
Mireia Aguado, with the former tallying all of her scores on a trio of three pointers and the latter dishing out six assists as well.
The Islanders will now come back home for just the second time this season for their next game, squaring off against another in-state opponent in UTEP on Tuesday at 4 p.m. at the American Bank Center.
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