| |
| Junior Onika Anderson had a double-double of 17 points and 10 rebounds on Friday. |
KATY ? Junior Onika Anderson posted her ninth double-double of the season with team highs of 17 points and 10 rebounds to lead the UTSA women’s basketball team into the Southland Conference Tournament championship game with a 77-67 win against UT Arlington on Friday at the Merrell Center.
“We’ve played our best games this season against Arlington,” head coach Rae Rippetoe-Blair said following the 10-point victory. “Our game plan was to stop them in transition ? we were sending three players back at times ? and to keep them off the boards. I thought we did a great job of sticking to that throughout the game. We haven’t handled adversity very well at times this year, but we handled it well today. There were things that weren’t going our way, but we fought through it and got the win.”
The Roadrunners, who return to the conference finals the second time in the last three years, also won their 22nd game of the year, which broke the record set by the 1983-84 squad (21-6).
Freshman guard Jordan Stark and junior guard Monica Gibbs added 14 points apiece, while freshman guard Whitney York chipped in with 13. Gibbs also dished out a game-high seven assists.
“We’re very excited about moving on to the championship game,” Gibbs said. “It means a lot and we can't wait until the game tomorrow.”
Tiffeny Riles poured in a game-high 19 points for the Mavericks, who ended their season at 19-10 overall. Shalyn Martin and Maryann Abanobi each chipped in with 15 apiece.
Senior Amanda Foster’s 3-pointer highlighted a UTSA 7-0 run to start the second half that gave the Roadrunners a 43-37 lead with 16:59 left. Abanobi’s driving layup cut the deficit deficit to four at the 15:29 mark, but freshman guard Amber Gregg’s 3-pointer from the left corner increased the advantage to seven a minute-and-a-half later The Mavericks then pulled within two on Meghan Nelson’s layup at the 11-minute mark, but it would the closet UTA would get for the rest of the game, as Stark scored eight of the next 10 points to push UTSA's lead to eight at 60-52.
Senior guard Terrie Davis connected on her third 3-pointer of the game to give the Roadrunners their largest lead of the game at 67-56 with five minutes to play. A layup by Riles got the Mavericks within seven, but Gibbs completed a three-point play to push the edge back to double digits (70-60) two minutes later. UT Arlington was forced to foul in the closing minutes and UTSA capitalized from the charity strip en route to the 10-point win.
Davis connected on her second three-ball of the first half to put the Roadrunners up 10-6 with 15:35 left, but UTA netted the next four points to tie the game. Both teams exchanged baskets over the next four minutes, but the Roadrunners pushed their lead to 25-20 on Anderson’s layup with 7:28 to go in the half. A Riles put-back bucket with 5:38 remaining capped off a 5-0 run that tied the game at 25. After the Mavericks extended their lead to 33-29, UTSA ended the stanza with a 7-2 spurt and headed into the locker room with the one-point lead (36-35).
The Roadrunners will face Lamar in Saturday's 3 p.m. championship game that will be televised live on FOX Sports Southwest. The Athletics Department is sponsoring a bus that will travel to the game. Click here for more details.