EDINBURG, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women's basketball team picked up their second win in as many days on Friday evening, taking down Eastern Michigan by a final score of 67-52 to secure a perfect 2-0 record at the UTRGV Holiday Classic.
The win marked the fourth non-conference victory over a Division I opponent for the Islanders (7-4) this year, who also did so in the first two games of the season against Texas A&M and Texas State and again yesterday against Kansas City. It was also the first time that the team earned wins on back-to-back days since March 13 and 14 of this year, when they took down Southeastern and Lamar in consecutive games to emerge victorious in the Southland Conference Tournament.
In similar fashion to their first game of the week on Thursday, the Islanders found themselves behind the eight ball early in Friday's contest, falling behind in large part due to a molten-hot shooting start by Eastern Michigan from downtown. The Eagles got things going by knocking down five of their first six three-point attempts, which included a stretch of three in a row in the first three minutes of the game to put A&M-Corpus Christi in a hole right away. Keeping the team in it on the offensive end were graduate
Mireia Aguado and senior
Annukka Willstedt, with the former tallying eight of the team's 18 points in the opening quarter and the latter coming in right behind with seven.
Much like they have all season so far, the Islanders got back into things on the defensive end once the second quarter rolled around. They tightened the screws on the Eagles in a big way, keeping their opponents off the scoreboard entirely over the final 6:24 of the period while holding them to just 2-10 shooting from the field and 0-6 from downtown. The team also managed to force 11 turnovers in the frame, four of which came on consecutive possessions near the end of the half that led to some easy transition baskets for Aguado and senior
Tymberlin Criswell. This swarming effort was the main catalyst behind a 10-0 run to close out the quarter for the Islanders, which put them up 30-26 going into halftime.
The momentum from this stretch did not dissipate, either, as A&M-Corpus Christi came out of the break just as hot as it went into it, opening the third quarter with a 12-1 outburst to make it 22 of the last 23 total points in the game dating back to the second. This run saw a balanced attack on offense, with Aguado and Criswell each picking up four quick points and Willstedt and graduate
Paige Allen joining the action with a bucket apiece. This helped the Islanders go up by 15, and by the end of the frame, their advantage sat in double digits at 11.
Eastern Michigan did fight back in the final quarter, coming out with five quick points to open the fourth to bring the margin back down to six, the smallest it had been since 37 seconds into the second half. This would be the closest that the Eagles would get, however, as a quick flurry by the Islanders kept the comeback effort from getting off the ground. This late-game run started with a bucket by junior
Samora Watson, and it continued the same way it did on Thursday, with Criswell stepping up and nailing a three pointer from the corner to go back up by double digits. Freshmen
Torie Sevier and
Naiya Carney followed with a pair of made baskets of their own, with the former converting on a try in the paint and the latter getting a scoop shot to fall while drawing a foul, and Aguado put the exclamation point on with a transition layup to make it a 9-0 run and a game-high 17-point lead, a mark that would prove to be more than enough to ride the rest of the way.
The story of the day individually for the Islanders was the play of Aguado, who managed to match her career-high in points at 22 that she set on February 3 of this year against Lamar. The Barcelona native also got involved in other ways as well, tying her season-high of six rebounds and reaching the five-assist mark for the fifth time this season. She also shot the ball very efficiently on top of this, converting on eight of her 13 attempts from the field and six of seven tries from the free-throw line.
The team also got a great effort from Criswell, who followed up her 17-point performance on Thursday with a 13-point showing today on six of nine shooting. In the two games during the UTRGV Holiday Classic, she averaged 15 points, three steals, 1.5 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game while shooting 58.8 percent from the field, 2-4 from downtown and 8-10 from the line.
The Islanders will now have their longest stretch between games of the season, taking the next eight days off for their holiday break. They will return to game action on December 29, coming back home to the Dugan Wellness Center to square off against Schreiner at 1 p.m.
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