HBU WBB: Sloppy play and early hole lead to 75-65 loss to TAMUCC

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It was one of those days at Sharp Gym for the Huskies yesterday. One of the most important things in a basketball game is limiting turnovers and making good decisions with the ball. In this one, the Huskies got off to a cold shooting start and made some bad passes to go down seven, 9-2 early on. Texas A&M-Corpus Christi forwards Alexes Bryant and Dalesia Booth each scored five points early on and HBU gave up seven points off turnovers in the first five minutes of the game.

To make matters worse, HBU missed five of their first seven shots and were making bad passes to hurt them even more. That lead would grow to 19-4 at the 3:25 mark of the first quarter and it looked like this game was over early. TAMUCC also hit the first three three-pointers of the game and it prompted their radio announcer to tell me that this is what they would normally get for the game. To me, that was a sign of things to come in this game.

By the end of the first, it was 25-11 and the Islanders were shooting 69% from the floor and 100% from three-point land. In contrast, HBU was at 31%, 5-16 and 1-3 from three-point range. Every player for th Huskies was a minus in the +/- column too.

The second quarter saw no let-up from the Islanders. Every time HBU made a little run, it was answered with a TAMUCC run to extend the lead again. The Islanders were also distributing the scoring load as Alecia Westbrook, Makinna Serrata and Dae Dae Evans hit a few baskets of their own. With 3:54 left in the half, the Islanders were up 36-25, were shooting 80% from the floor and were still at 100% from three. HBU improved to 5-8 from the floor but could not mount any kind of consistency. Passes were thrown softly lacking the zip they needed to reach the player the pass was intended for.

By halftime, it was 41-28 Islanders and the only place HBU held an advantage was points off the bench, 21-10. Of course, that was because their starters had shot a combined 3-13 from the floor and the team was at 38% for the half. Meanwhile, the Islanders continued the red-hot shooting at 64% and had not missed a three, 4-4, yet.

In the third period, HBU would go on a 12-2 run to cut the lead to 51-44. But, the Islanders would answer with a 13-5 run of their own to take the lead 64-49. The thought was that at some point TAMUCC would cool off, but on this night it would not happen By the end of the third it was 56-46 Islanders and the only question at that point would be the margin of victory.

In the fourth, the lead would get close to 20 as bad pass after bad pass, bad decision after bad decision would take its toll on HBU. The one spark they had was from guard, Megan Valdez-Crader. She would get hot and score 13 of her 17 points in the final 14 minutes of the game to keep it respectable. But in the end, 67% shooting from three-point land, 53% from the floor, and 91% from the free-throw line by the Islanders was too much to overcome. The final from Sharp Gym was a TAMUCC 75-65 win.

Next week, the Huskies head off the play the New Orleans Privateers before coming back home on February 8 to play Northwestern St.