SAN ANTONIO, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women's basketball team came up short in their afternoon contest on Saturday, faltering late and falling to a hot Incarnate Word team by a final score of 76-58.
The loss was just the third for the Islanders (10-8, 2-5 SLC) in 24 all-time matchups against the Cardinals (10-7, 5-3 SLC), and it snapped what had been an 11-game winning streak against their Southland Conference rivals. Prior to Saturday, the last victory for UIW in the series came nearly five years ago on March 2, 2019.
Coming off of a hard-fought victory over HCU two days ago, the Islanders once again got off on the right foot against UIW early, using a balanced offensive attack from all five starters to jump out to a quick 12-6 lead just six minutes into the ballgame. Soon after, however, the home team began to wake up, getting the score back down to one at the end of the first and then ripping off a 9-3 run midway through the second to take a six-point lead of their own. Five consecutive points from senior
Tymberlin Criswell helped A&M-Corpus Christi slow UIW's momentum down a little bit, but back-to-back buckets from the Cardinals right before halftime helped them go into the locker room up 37-31.
Now facing this deficit, the Islanders worked to slowly chip away out of the break, getting it back down to just two halfway through the third after a three-pointer from Criswell and back-to-back buckets in the paint from graduate
Paige Allen and senior
Annukka Willstedt. UIW knocked down a pair of shots on the other side to stem the tide briefly, but A&M-Corpus Christi roared back once again late in the period, using and-ones on back-to-back possessions from graduate
Mireia Aguado to bring the score level for the first time since the 7:01 mark of the second quarter.
The game got back to the back-and-forth affair it had been early following this, with UIW getting its lead back up to five before the end of the frame before the Islanders quickly responded with a run of their own to bring it back down to just one. Unfortunately for the visitors, though, the Cardinals would punch right back with the biggest run of the afternoon, ripping off a 14-2 stretch to grab the first double-digit advantage for either team all day. They continued to light the net on fire after this as well, eventually turning what had been a close game for the majority of the time into an eventual 18-point loss for A&M-Corpus Christi.
By the time the final buzzer sounded, the Islanders found themselves outscored in the fourth quarter by a whopping 15 points, tallying just nine themselves as opposed to 24 by the Cardinals. On offense, they knocked down just three of their 12 attempts from the field and missed both of their tries from downtown, while on the other side, they allowed UIW to shoot 8-17 overall while drilling three crucial shots from beyond the arc. The biggest discrepancy in the final period came on the glass, with A&M-Corpus Christi getting outrebounded 17-4 overall and 9-1 on the offensive boards. This enabled the Cardinals to put up 10 second chance points, which accounted for most of the score difference at the end of the game.
The Islanders were led in the points column by Criswell, who scored 14 on 4-8 shooting while knocking down two of her five three-pointers and all four of her attempts from the line. Aguado came in right behind with 13 on 6-13 from the field, and Allen reached double figures for the second straight game with 11 while also grabbing a team-high seven rebounds.
The Islanders will now head back home for a pair of contests at the American Bank Center next week, first welcoming McNeese on Thursday at 7 p.m. before turning around to square off against Nicholls on Saturday at 1 p.m.
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