Credit to Brandon Collins | Associate Director, Athletics Communications – 12thman.com
BRYAN-COLLEGE STATION, Texas – The Texas A&M women’s basketball team dominated the glass in Sunday’s 87-63 victory over the Texas A&M Commerce Lions inside Reed Arena.
Three Aggies hit double-digits in caroms as Texas A&M mounted a 71-42 rebounding margin. The rebound tally tied for the second-best in school history behind a 73-rebound effort against Chicago State on Dec. 6, 1991. Lauren Ware and Maliyah Johnson both had career highs in rebounds with 16 and 14, respectively. Janiah Barker added 12.
Ware and Barker recorded double-doubles in the same game for the fourth time this season. The efforts marked Ware’s eighth double-double of the season and the sixth for Barker. Ware’s performance included another career high with 19 points as well as three blocks. Barker tallied 19 points to go with her dozen caroms in just 20 minutes of action.
Endyia Rogers chipped in with 15 points, four assists and three rebounds, also seeing 20 minutes of floor time. Tineya Hylton was one point shy of a career best with 11 points to go with five rebounds and two steals.
Texas A&M also overwhelmed the Lions in the paint offensively with a 56-22 scoring edge.
The win was the 10th in a row for Texas A&M (12-1). It is the longest streak for the Aggies since an 11-game stretch running from January 17-March 5, 2021.
Commerce started the contest making 4-of-6 from the field, including two 3-pointers, to keep the game tied early, but A&M’s Rogers made consecutive layups as the Maroon & White took a 14-10 lead into the media timeout at the 4:31 mark of the first quarter.
Texas A&M stretched the lead out to 20-12 with 2:43 remaining in the opening period with jumpers by Sydney Bowles and Barker and a pair of free throws by Barker during a 6-0 surge. The Lions responded with a 7-0 run to close the gap to 20-19, but an old-fashioned 3-point play by Bowles gave Texas A&M a 23-19 edge at the intermission.
The Aggies started the second quarter on a 15-0 run to take control of the game, 38-19, at the 5:40 mark.
After exchanging buckets early in the third quarter, Texas A&M staked claim to a 68-37 lead with 2:23 remaining in the period on the heels of a 16-3 surge which included eight points by Barker. The Maroon & White took a 72-45 advantage into the final intermission.
The Aggies claimed their biggest cushion of the game, 83-51, on a Vanessa Saidu layup with 4:23 on the clock, before Commerce went on its final run of the game.
Up Next
The Aggies begin conference play on Jan. 4 as they travel to Georgia for a 6 p.m. tipoff.
POSTGAME NOTES
RECORDS & SERIES NOTES
Texas A&M faced off against Texas A&M-Commerce for the first time ever and is now 1-0 against the Lions.
Joni Taylor’s career record advances to 161-96 all-time and to 21-21 in her two seasons with the Aggies.
TEAM NOTES
The Maroon & White extends its winning streak to 10 games, outdoing their last winning streak of nine games at the start of the 2021-22 season. The Aggies have outscored their opponents by an average of 33.5 points during the streak.
Texas A&M posted the 10th double-digit winning streak in program history on Sunday. The last came at the tail end of the 2020-21 season, when the Aggies boasted an 11-game winning streak.
The Maroon & White went 12-1 in non-conference play for the fifth time in school history. The 12-1 mark tied for the second best non-con record for the Aggies.
The Aggies came into the game with the No. 2 field goal percentage defense in the nation and continued that against the Lions holding them to 31.3% (25-80) from the field.
Texas A&M grabbed 71 rebounds during the game, which tied a 71-rebound game against North Texas on December 15, 1984, for the second most in program history. The Aggies entered the tilt as the No. 5 rebounding team in the nation averaging 47.8 per game.
The Aggies dominated the game inside the paint, outscoring A&M-Commerce 56-22 inside. The 56 points in the paint is the most the Maroon & White has scored inside this season.
The Maroon & White entered the contest ranking No. 7 in rebounding margin (14.6) and outrebounded the Lions by 29 boards (71-42), which ties their highest rebounding margin of the season (29 vs. HCU on Nov. 20, 2023).
The Aggies held A&M-commerce to seven points in the second quarter, the 13th time this season Texas A&M has held an opponent to less than 10 points in a quarter.
Texas A&M had four scorers in double-digits for the eight time this season with Ware (19), Barker (19), Rogers (15) and Hylton (11).
Lauren Ware and Janiah Barker recorded a double-double in the same game for the fourth time this season. Ware had 19 points and 16 rebounds while Barker tallied 19 points and 12 boards.
The Aggies registered a season-low seven turnovers, besting the previous low of nine versus Prairie View A&M.
Texas A&M began with a starting lineup of Endyia Rogers, Aicha Coulibaly, Sahara Jones, Janiah Barker and Lauren Ware (12-1).
INDIVIDUAL NOTES
Lauren Ware
Recorded a career-high 19 points.
Grabbed a career-high 16 rebounds.
Recorded her eighth double-double of the season.
Janiah Barker
Recorded her sixth double-double of the season with 19 points and 12 rebounds.
MJ Johnson
Recorded a career-high 15 rebounds off the bench.
Tineya Hylton
Led the Aggies in scoring off the bench with a season-high 11 points.
Tied her career-high in rebounds with five.
Postgame Quotes
Head Coach Joni Taylor
On lessons learned in non-conference…
“I think you’ve got to always try to make opponents go to plan B and I’m not sure we really did that tonight. They just missed some shots. Some of that has something to do with our defense. Obviously, we defend at a high level, but they were still able to get the looks that they wanted and when you play against teams in our conference, you’re going to pay for that. Hopefully we’ve learned some things from that. I think offensively, we did some good things that we worked on after the break and so we learned some good things from that as well. Some things we put in some tweaks we’ve made, but we’ve got to be better locked in. We can’t let people get to what they want.”
On things to tweak before conference…
“Yeah, we’re in it now. I mean, we’ll be off tomorrow, and then we’ll be prep, prep, game, prep, prep, game, but this is what it is. If we don’t have a few major things figured out, we’re in trouble. Obviously, you tweak, and you grow, and you adjust as the season goes on, but the staples of who we are are in place.”
Sophomore Forward Janiah Barker
On the rebounding efforts…
“We are a great rebound team. We are second in the SEC in rebounds, number one is South Carolina. So, the SEC is very physical, it gets serious. I think one thing about it is they tell us to go rebound, and that’s one thing we’re going to do is go rebound the ball, offensive and defensive. We want to make sure that the other team does not get second chance points and for us to get as many second chance points we can get, that’s our goal.”
Redshirt Junior Forward Lauren Ware
On getting a win before conference play…
“I think that’s good for us just to get this win after being off for a little while to get back in shape, going into SEC play. I think there’s obviously some things that we need to still work on and get better at. We emphasized not letting them get threes off and they still did that. So, I think that was something we needed to adjust better with, but the first game back we’re going to get better, and I think this was a good game for us to prepare us for SEC play.”