CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women's basketball team came back home from its longest road trip of the season in style on Thursday morning, snapping its three-game losing streak by dominating Houston Christian 74-54 in front of a rowdy Education Day crowd at the American Bank Center.
The win secured the Islanders (12-13, 4-10 SLC) the season sweep over the Huskies (6-18, 3-12 SLC), whom they also took down on the road back on January 16. The 20-point margin of victory marked their largest of the season against a Division I opponent, surpassing their 15-point win over Eastern Michigan at the UTRGV Holiday Classic, and the 74 points that they scored on offense was the most since they poured in 78 against New Orleans on January 2.
Unlike what the final score would indicate, the game on Thursday started out as a tight one, with the two teams trading points for the first half of the opening quarter. The Islanders soon started to flex their muscle, though, ripping off a 12-0 run to close out the period with their first double-digit lead of the day. Graduate
Mireia Aguado got this stretch going with a nice finish at the basket, which was then followed by a three-pointer by junior
Samora Watson and a two from graduate
Paige Allen. Senior
Jaeda Whitner got herself on the score sheet with a triple of her own, and to cap things off, Watson came off a screen and buried a jumper from the nail with the clock winding down to bring the score up to 18-8.
HCU did not immediately fold after this, getting things back to within three after scoring 10 of the first 13 points to open the second period. A&M-Corpus Christi staved off this run by launching an assault on the paint, however, starting with a nice and-one converted by junior
Monae' Duffy. This was just the start of an excellent string of plays for Duffy, with the forward getting another bucket in the paint to go just a few possessions later, hitting senior
Tymberlin Criswell ahead in transition for a score after a rebound soon after, and finishing things off by drawing a foul and knocking down a pair of free throws at the line. Senior
Annukka Willstedt also made her presence known near the end of the half as well, grabbing offensive rebounds on three straight times down the floor and putting them back up for six easy points to help the Islanders go up 14 going into the break.
The Islanders kept the Huskies at bay for a while coming out of halftime, but it wasn't until a molten-hot stretch of shooting from Whitner that they really started to extend their advantage further. The guard got back on the ledger by knocking down a triple with two minutes left in the third, and she closed out the frame by sinking another one soon after to put them up by 21. Whitner was not done from here, either, getting on the board again from distance to open the fourth and then putting the exclamation point on her day with her fifth hit of the afternoon to force an HCU timeout with the score sitting at 65-40 in favor of A&M-Corpus Christi. This would prove to be more than enough to ride out the rest of the way, with the team getting its lead as high as 26 before eventually running out the clock on its 20-point victory.
This outburst helped Whitner lead the way in scoring on the day for the Islanders, finishing with 15 points on 5-8 shooting from the field and 5-6 from downtown. The next highest scorer also came from the reserves, as Duffy ended up reaching 14 points on 5-10 shooting while also grabbing seven rebounds and knocking down all four of her tries from the line in her 25 minutes off the bench. Aguado and Allen joined these two as the other players in double figures, with the former matching Duffy with 14 points while also filling up the stat sheet for five assists, five rebounds and two steals, and the latter pitching in 12 points and seven boards of her own.
On the team side, the Islanders outdid the Huskies in nearly every important benchmark, starting with winning the rebounding battle 32-28. They also finished with a better turnover margin, nabbing 18 while giving up just 10 themselves, and they converted theirs into 25 points as opposed to just 12 from HCU. Finally, A&M-Corpus Christi made a point of getting out in transition, picking up 20 fast break points while surrendering only five on the other end.
The Islanders will now try to carry the momentum from their big win into their next game on Saturday, hosting Incarnate Word at the American Bank Center at 1 p.m. in the second meeting between the two teams this season.
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