CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women's basketball team ushered in the reign of new head coach Toyelle Wilson with a bang on Monday evening, earning a blowout win over the College of Biblical Studies in the 2025-26 season opener by an overwhelming final score of 100-30.
The 70-point margin of victory marks the new program record for the Islanders (1-0), surpassing the previous high of 66 set on two different occasions against Schreiner on February 19, 2001 and Huston-Tillotson on December 30, 2015. They also reached the 100-point threshold for just the fourth time in program history, joining the two aforementioned games and a matchup against Texas State on March 12, 2008.
A&M-Corpus Christi had five different players reach double figures on the historic evening, a group that was led by redshirt sophomore
Torie Sevier, who returned from injury for her first game in almost 10 months and immediately recorded career highs with 23 points and eight rebounds on 7-8 shooting from the field and a perfect 9-9 from the free throw line. Following close behind Sevier was senior
Marissa Shelton, with the newcomer reaching 20 points herself in her Islanders debut while also stuffing the stat sheet for five rebounds, four assists and four steals. Junior
Asha Walker reached 18 points on a molten-hot 6-9 shooting from three-point range, and rounding out those with at least 10 were senior
Samora Watson and graduate
Chelsea Wooten with 14 and 13 respectively. The last two also helped orchestrate the offense on the ball, with the former dishing out six assists and the latter reaching 10 for the team's first double-double of the new season.
The Islanders set the tone in their first game right from the opening whistle, scoring the first 15 points of the evening behind a seven-point outburst from Shelton and eight more combined between Wooten, Sevier and Walker. While the offense found a great rhythm to kick things off, the team's defense also came out of the gates on fire, holding the Ambassadors to just 1-12 shooting total across the entire the first period while forcing seven turnovers. The hosts managed to put an exclamation point on the end of the quarter, getting a steal on defense and setting Wooten up to beat the clock with a long-range three to increase the lead up to a commanding 22-2.
From here, the Islanders continued to pour it on, winning the second quarter by a 10-point margin and the third by nine to give themselves an outside shot at history in the final 10 minutes. After sitting with an advantage of 48 points halfway through the fourth, they put their foot on the gas once again down the home stretch, raining down a barrage of threes to push the lead up exponentially as the clock ticked down. A triple by Wooten with 46 seconds left matched the magic number of 66 at the top of the history books, and a pair of free throws from her soon after pushed the team into record-breaking territory. To put the cherry on top after this as well, Sevier managed to draw a foul of her own on the last possession while the Islanders sat on 98 points, and on her trip to the line, she calmly knocked down both to push them into the century mark when the buzzer sounded.
By the time the dust settled, A&M-Corpus Christi showcased eye-popping stats as a team up and down the box score, starting with a 15-35 shooting night from deep to easily surpass the previous program record for most threes in a game of 12 reached on three separate occasions. The Islanders outrebounded the Ambassadors 51-30 on the strength of a game-high 12 boards from senior
K'Nari Holliday and won the turnover battle 30-13 behind four steals apiece from Holliday, Wooten and Shelton. They also scored 44 points off of these turnovers while giving up just seven on theirs, doing so while also scoring 17 on the fast break and 22 off second chances.
The Islanders will now try to roll this momentum into a big nonconference match on Wednesday at 7 p.m., when they travel to College Station to take on Texas A&M looking to make it back-to-back years with a win over the Aggies.
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