FRISCO – The 10-seed UTSA women's basketball team (9-21) saw its Conference USA tournament run come to an end with a quarterfinal setback to two-seed WKU (22-8) on Thursday afternoon at The Star. Sophomore Marie Benson scored a team-best 22 points in the 78-50 setback for the Roadrunners.
"First of all, I'd like to congratulate Western Kentucky, obviously a very strong performance by them," UTSA head coach Kristen Holt said. They're a very good team. When we played them earlier in the year they kind of did the same thing to us and lately we've been improving and getting better. I just thought they started out the game very aggressive. We were tentative on the other hand, but that's the sign of a good team in Western Kentucky and they've got really good players and they're hard to guard. Overall, just really pleased with the team winning six out of the last 10, it shows a lot of improvement, especially at the end of the year when you want to be strong going into tournaments, so I'm very proud of our group overall."
For the game, WKU shot 47.5 percent from the floor and 63.0 percent from the charity stripe but hit only 5-of-16 from 3-point range. Conversely, UTSA shot 35.6 percent from the field and 2-of-16 (12.5 percent) from distance. The Lady Toppers were guided by C-USA Player of the Year Ivy Brown, who grabbed a game-high 23 points and 12 rebounds.
The Roadrunners fell down by nine after a quarter, while 10 points from Brown and four UTSA turnovers, pushed WKU up by 18 (45-27) by the half. The Lady Toppers used a 25-8 third quarter to stretch their lead to 35 points (70-35).
Relentless, Benson poured in 10 of her 22 points in the fourth quarter to help the Roadrunners outscore WKU, 15-8. However, UTSA's deficit was too great to over come as the Lady Toppers claimed the win.
The Roadrunners finish the regular season with a 9-21 overall record.
