COMMERCE, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women's basketball team picked up one of their best wins of the season on Thursday evening, erasing a double-digit lead after a furious comeback to take down East Texas A&M in Commerce by a final score of 55-45.
The win was the biggest come-from-behind victory of the season for the Islanders (11-10, 3-7 SLC), surpassing their seven-point comebacks against both Kansas City and Eastern Michigan at the UTRGV Holiday Classic on December 19 and 20. It also preserved their undefeated record over the Lions (4-15, 1-9 SLC) in the all-time series, improving to a perfect 7-0 in the matchup.
Coming off a pair of losses at home last week, A&M-Corpus Christi found itself behind the eight ball again early on Thursday, getting blitzed from three-point range by the hosts to start things off. The team held the Lions to just 6-17 shooting overall in the first quarter, but four of their makes in the frame came from distance, which helped get their offense hot from the jump. This issue was compounded by a cold start for the Islanders from the field, as they managed to knock down just three shots total to finish the period on just eight points and with a 10-point deficit.
These offensive issues continued into the second quarter, with the team getting held off the scoreboard for more than four minutes after a trio of early buckets from graduate
Nabaweeyah McGill. The first sign of the tide turning for the Islanders appeared late in the period, however, coming in the form of a spark from senior
Jaeda Whitner off the bench. With less than two minutes to go in the half, Whitner buried a pair of huge triples to keep things from getting out of hand, first drilling one off a feed from freshman
Naiya Carney and then knocking down the next one off the dribble with just five seconds left on the clock to keep the team's deficit at 10 heading into halftime.
As it turned out, the momentum from this run carried over out of the break, as the Islanders finally put together their first sustained run of the game in the third. They rode the strength of their defense for most of the period, keeping the Lions from scoring for a nearly five-minute stretch and holding them to just six points on 3-12 shooting in total. This helped get their offense going as well, scoring seven of their 14 points in the quarter off of six forced turnovers. Graduate
Mireia Aguado was the primary threat during this time, tallying seven of her nine points on the day in the third, including a stretch of five in a row to help bring A&M-Corpus Christi to within as low as two.
Now back within striking distance, the fourth quarter became the McGill show early on. The forward sank a free throw line jumper off of a feed from graduate
Paige Allen on the team's first possession to tie the score up for the first time since it was level at 4-4, and just a minute later, she grabbed a tough offensive rebound and put it back in to give the Islanders their first lead of the night. She wasn't done after this, either, getting her defender in the air on a pump fake at the arc and taking it all the way to the rim for another bucket to put the team up three and then knocking down a pair of free throws to make it eight points for her in just over five minutes of action.
This outburst from McGill gave the Islanders a cushion for the first time all night, and they did not let it go to waste from there on out. Junior
Samora Watson kept up the momentum with a pullup midrange jumper to just beat the shot clock, and to put the finishing touches on things, Allen got a tough finish off of an inbound on the baseline to drop and drew a foul in the process. This and-one put A&M-Corpus Christi up by eight with just two minutes left, a lead that proved to be more than enough to ride to the finish line.
The story of the day was the performance of McGill, who finished her best game of the season with 16 points and a career-high 14 rebounds in her 25 minutes off of the bench. This was just the second double-double of her five-year collegiate career, with the only other one coming on the road at New Orleans on January 13, 2024, and it was her third-highest scoring game ever, just behind a pair of 18-point performances against Southeastern in 2024 and Houston Christian in 2022.
Beyond McGill, the Islanders nearly had another double-double, with Allen finishing her day with 10 points and nine rebounds in total. Aguado and Watson each came in right behind Allen in scoring at nine apiece, and like McGill, junior
Bruna Anguera also set her own career high in rebounds with nine.
The Islanders will now try to make it a perfect road trip in their next outing on Saturday at 2 p.m., traveling to Edinburg to square off with UTRGV in the second South Texas Showdown of the 2025 season.
