NACOGDOCHES, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women's basketball team dropped the final contest of its season-long five-game road swing on Wednesday evening, falling to Stephen F. Austin by a final score of 84-62.
The Islanders (1-8, 0-2 SLC) came out of the gates with one of their best offensive starts of the season on Wednesday, knocking down five of their first six shots to earn a three-point lead over the Ladyjacks (7-3, 1-1 SLC) through the first part of the opening quarter. Senior
Marissa Shelton kicked this stretch off with a layup on a nice feed from redshirt senior
Trinity Slocum for the first basket of the game, and after a bucket by senior
Samora Watson, Slocum got on the board herself in her first start of the year with a pair of free throws to make it three straight possessions with points for the visitors. A missed field goal the next time down broke up this streak, but they would start another one right back up with makes from inside the arc from Watson and Slocum and a hit from three-point range by graduate
Chelsea Wooten to bring the score up to 13-10 in their favor.
Things would slow down after this for A&M-Corpus Christi, though, with the team scoring just six points through the rest of the first quarter and 12 throughout the entirety of the second while trying to crack SFA's switch to a zone-heavy defense. This put the Islanders down by a mark of 40-31 coming out of the break, where they would then proceed to find a bit of a spark again, scoring five straight points on a layup by Wooten and an and-one by redshirt sophomore
Torie Sevier to cut the deficit to just four points.
This would be the closest that the Islanders would get, as the Ladyjacks proceeded to win the remainder of the third quarter 23-7 to flip the momentum of the contest right back on its head. A&M-Corpus Christi did respond to this punch in the final frame, using four points apiece from Watson and sophomore
Rayna Williams over the final 10 minutes to draw nearly even the rest of the way, but the deficit that preceded this ended up remaining through the final buzzer.
Individually, the Islanders were led once again by Watson, who tallied a team-high 13 points to make it three straight games in double figures and seven in nine contests so far this season. Behind her, Wooten had one of her best all-around games of the year, reaching 10 points of her own while also dishing out eight assists and grabbing seven rebounds in a performance that came close to becoming the first triple-double in program history. Finally, Slocum also managed pour in 10 points in what ended up being her highest-scoring game of the year, doing so on an efficient 3-6 shooting from the field and 3-4 from the free throw line while adding four assists to boot.
The Islanders will now finally return home following their 12-day Christmas break, making their season debut at the newly christened Hilliard Center in their next time out against Nicholls on December 29 at 5 p.m.
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