Texas A&M Women’s Basketball Drops Game to Texas

News release from Texas A&M Athletics:

BRYAN-COLLEGE STATION – The Texas A&M women’s basketball team fell to the No. 5 Texas Longhorns, 70-50, inside Reed Arena Sunday night in the Cotton Holdings Lone Star Showdown.
The Aggies (10-11, 3-6 SEC) were led in scoring by Janae Kent and Jada Malone who each scored 12. Lauren Ware also poured in 11 points with a team-high nine rebounds.
The Longhorns (22-2, 8-1 SEC) jumped out to a 10-7 lead over the Aggies with 5:33 left in the first. Texas then went on an 8-0 run to inflate the cushion and the first frame wrapped up at 22-12 with Texas A&M playing from behind.
The Maroon & White was unable to draw closer in the second quarter as the Longhorns pushed the lead to a 38-21 hole for the Texas A&M.
The Aggies won the third quarter by a count of 15-13 behind Ware’s six points in the frame. Ware also grabbed four rebounds and only turned over the ball once. Texas still maintained the advantage heading into the final 10, 51-36.
The Maroon & White were unable to continue the momentum, as Texas claimed the Cotton Holdings Lone Star Showdown, 70-50.
The Aggies return to the court Thursday at Auburn at 6 p.m. inside Neville Arena.
POSTGAME NOTES
RECORDS & SERIES NOTES
  • The Aggies are now 24-64 in the all-time series versus Texas.
  • Joni Taylor’s career record moves to 178-119 all-time and to 38-44 in her three seasons with the Aggies.
 
TEAM NOTES
  • Texas A&M began with a starting lineup of Lauren Ware, Solè Williams, Janae Kent, Sahara Jones and Jada Malone for the first time this season (0-1).
 
INDIVIDUAL NOTES
Janae Kent
  • Scored 12 points only two points shy of her career high.
  • Matched her career high in assists (2).
  • Led the team in scoring for the third time this year.
  • Matched a season high of 33 minutes played in Sunday’s contest for the third time this year.
Jada Malone
  • Tied a season high, logging 27 minutes of action.
Erica Moon
  • Led team in assists for the seventh time this season.
POSTGAME QUOTES
Head Coach Joni Taylor
On what the team has improved on moving forward without Aicha Coulibaly
“There are times where I thought that we had tremendous fight. We wanted to not turn the ball over and stay close in rebounding. There are some things there that show we are fighting. Texas is really good and every time we made a mistake, they capitalized on it. We also have to take advantage of second-chance opportunities, we rebounded but didn’t convert points. Even though we only had 11 turnovers, I think Texas scored on every one of them that we had. When you’re playing someone who is that good in so many different areas, you can’t make those kinds of mistakes. Texas is very deliberate on offense and stingy on defense. We have to continue to teach it, show it and watch it. The ball also has to go in the hole, we had some good looks tonight that didn’t go in and I thought we forced some things. We have to be creative on how we’re going to score and maintain the fight that we have.”
Redshirt Senior Laurne Ware
On the press causing turnovers…
“I take full responsibility for that. We fixed it right away, usually, I don’t take the ball out, that’s just me not eating the turnovers. We were in a tough spot like that eating it, so I take responsibility for that. We got it fixed. We had to take the ball hard out of the post and screen for the guard. We knew that their posts were going to come and press us, just having a different pressure release was easier for us, and we executed it well when we got it figured out.
On the challenges of only having 8 players…
“For me personally its foul trouble, I need to stop fouling. That puts us in a tough spot as a team, and I take responsibility for it. We cannot afford to get into foul trouble while we only have three subs on the bench. That was one of our troubles, especially in this game, and fatigue. That’s not an excuse though, we know what we have to do regardless of if we have five, 10 or 15 people and coach knows that. Executing whether we have people or not is our job.
Sophomore Guard Janae Kent
On the hardest part about defending tonight…
“They just got it going. They figured out how to score in our zone and they got a lot of offensive rebounds.”
On how much pride they take on their defense…
“I think coach preaches that a lot being down to only eight players. We have to limit what other teams do.”

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