UTRGV women’s basketball (6-13, 2-8) season comes to an end on a sour note in a bad shooting performance against the No. 3 seed Grand Canyon University (16-6, 8-4) in the quarterfinal round of the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) Tournament Wednesday night in Las Vegas.
The Antelopes jumped out to a 10-0 lead to start the game as they forced four Vaquero turnovers that led to UTRGV Head Coach Lane Lord to call a timeout to calm his team’s early game miscues.
UTRGV countered by going on a 10–2 run to trail 10-12 with 3:23 to go in the first quarter as graduate guard Amara Graham found the bottom of the net with a transition layup and a pair of long bombs for an early eight points.
Grand Canyon would respond by going on a 31-12 run to lead 43-22 at the intermission.
Defensively, Grand Canyon Head Coach Molly Miller’s full-court press worked flawlessly as the team scored 15 points off of 10 UTRGV turnovers.
At the break, the Antelopes shot an out-of-this world 40% from the field, 50% from three and 83% from the line.
In the third quarter, the Vaqueros only saw five shots fall as they continued to struggle with the Antelopes defensive pressure as they trailed by 20, 36-56.
UTRGV would finally come alive in the fourth quarter outscoring Grand Canyon 18-11 but by then, it was too late as the Vaqueros adversity-filled 2020-21 season came to a close in a 54-67 loss.
For the game, the Vaqueros would shoot 35% from the field and 30% from deep with only Graham and junior center Burcu Soysal shooting over 50% on the night.
In a postgame news conference via Zoom, Lord said the aggressive play of Grand Canyon affected his team’s ability to make shots all night long. .
“I just think that Grand Canyon really frightened some of our players with their press ,” he said. “We didn’t handle it very well, we didn’t coach very well and all the credit goes to Grand Canyon. When you are a college basketball player and you are wide open you got to make your shots, you got to make at least one out of two when nobody is guarding you. We had those looks all night long and we did not hit them down except for Amara.”
Graham would close out her college career with a game-high 24 points shooting 5-8 from deep to go along with six rebounds and four assists. After the game through tears and a broken voice, she spoke to the impact UTRGV and South Texas has had on her.
“I mean coming here, UTRGV has been my second home,” Graham said.
Amidst of the disappointment of the season coming to an end, both Lord and Graham were thankful to have been able to coach and play the game of basketball during the COVID-19 pandemic, an opportunity that was not afforded to everyone.
“We finished, we persevered with all the adversity,” Lord said. “A Lot of good things came out of this season, number one, just getting to play the great game of basketball was special. We got a great group of kids and they battled through everything and very proud of them.”
Graham added.
“I think we should be grateful overal that we even got to play one game let alone 20,” she said. “ I was great just to have that opportunity to be on the court. Last year we ended our season here abruptly and it was no guarantee that we would even have a season. It was just fun.”
Now headed into a long off-season, Lord wants to focus on improving the team at all levels and getting a chance to work with his team during the summer.
“For our staff we just want to get with our team for a whole year and see if we can improve our player development,” he said. “We have to upgrade the roster here in the offseason which we have and so we just got to continue to grow the program and throw this year out of the books, except for Amara Graham’s play…, we got to get better in all aspects of the program and that falls on me. I’m excited about the challenge I’m excited about next year.”
The Antelopes, with the first WAC tournament win under Miller, advance to a semi-final round as freshman guard Tiarra Brown led the way with 16 points and eight rebounds.
GCU will battle against the No. 2 seed Utah Valley University 4 p.m. Friday as they look to punch their ticket into the WAC Championship game and a chance at the NCAA Tournament in San Antonio later this month.
You can continue to watch the WAC Tournament on ESPN+.
Twitter: @Radio_Rubio
