CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The Texas A&M-Corpus Christi women's basketball team was unable to make it two wins in a row to wrap up its homestand on Saturday afternoon, dropping to HCU in the first matchup between the two squads this season by a final score of 63-50.
Coming off a thrilling victory over UIW two days earlier, the Islanders (4-16, 3-10 SLC) came out riding that momentum against the Huskies (6-14, 4-9 SLC) once the ball went up, scoring 15 of the first 23 points to jump out to a nice early lead. This run saw a balanced offensive attack where four of their five starters managed to get on the scoreboard, with sophomore
Rayna Williams, redshirt sophomore
Torie Sevier and senior
Marissa Shelton all notching four points apiece and junior
Asha Walker chipping in with three herself. A couple of HCU baskets on the other side managed to stem this tide a little bit, but the hosts still ended the first 10 minutes with a 15-12 advantage.
From here, the two squads went back-and-forth throughout nearly the entirety of the second quarter, trading baskets all the way up until a six-point Huskies run near the end of the half gave the visitors their first lead since the early goings of the contest. The defensive intensity was ramped up during this stretch, as A&M-Corpus Christi held HCU to just 13 points on 5-11 shooting in total but only tallied nine on 3-13 from the field itself.
Where the game got away from the Islanders was in the third quarter, as after coming out of the break trailing by just a point, they were outscored 21-8 during the period and fell behind by as many as 18 early in the fourth as a result. The final quarter did go a little better, as they outscored HCU while finding their offense again to the tune of seven makes on 11 shots, but the deficit they were forced to climb out of proved to be too much to overcome despite this.
Saturday was an uncharacteristic shooting day for A&M-Corpus Christi, with the team going just 4-20 from three-point range after coming into the day with the fourth-best percentage from distance in the Southland Conference. The hosts also lost the battle of points in the paint 32-24, which tipped the math of the game too far out of their favor when accounting for both.
The Islanders were led in scoring by Williams, who tallied 11 points in her 27 minutes while also grabbing six rebounds. This matched the career-high that she reached just nine days ago against UTRGV, and it marked the first time this season that she paced the squad in total points. Senior
K'Nari Holliday was the other member of the team to reach double figures, pouring in 10 points on 4-6 shooting in addition to a game-high eight rebounds.
The Islanders will now try to get back on track when they hit the road for two games next week, a trip that starts in the Big Easy with a showdown against New Orleans on Thursday at 6:30 p.m.
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