The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
University of Texas
8-5,0-1Big 12
TCU
10-2,1-0Big 12
No. 25 Women's Basketball falls to TCU, 65-63
01.03.2020 | Women's Basketball
Down by nine points, the Longhorns rally but just fall short in Big 12 opener.
AUSTIN, Texas – Down by nine points in the fourth quarter, No. 25 Texas rallied to take a two-point lead with 57 seconds remaining in the game on Friday night at the Frank Erwin Center – but a put-back bucket by TCU's Michelle Berry with six seconds remaining on the clock gave the Horned Frogs a 65-63 victory in the Big 12 Conference opener for both squads.
Texas (8-5, 0-1) had a last-second opportunity to tie the game, but a turnover by Sug Sutton while maneuvering for a shot gave TCU (10-2, 1-0) possession and the win.
Lashann Higgs scored 14 to lead the Longhorns. Joyner Holmes contributed her ninth double-double of the season, scoring 12 points and getting 13 rebounds. Sutton scored 10. Lauren Heard led all scorers with 26 for TCU. Berry, who made the winning shot, scored 15.
Cold shooting characterized the game's first five minutes, with the Longhorns hitting two of their first 12 field goal attempts and the Horned Frogs making two of their initial 10. TCU led, 13-12, at the end of the first quarter, with each team shooting 22 percent from the field. Holmes picked up her second foul at the 3:04 mark, which curtailed her playing time for the duration of the first half.
Texas went on an 9-2 run to begin the second quarter, giving the Longhorns a 22-14 lead at the 7:02 mark, but TCU closed the margin to one with 3:42 left on the clock. Texas took a 32-27 lead into the locker room, shooting 34 percent and limiting TCU to 25 percent. Sutton led UT with ten points in the halftime statistics. Four Texas starters played limited minutes because they had picked up their second foul, but the Texas bench contributed 12 first-half points to maintain the lead.
The early-third quarter margin varied between a five-point lead for Texas and a three-point advantage for TCU. Then, midway through the period, the game was tied three times. In the last two minutes, TCU scored consecutive three-point jumpers by Berry and Heard to end the third quarter with a 50-45 Horned Frog lead.
TCU took a nine-point lead with 6:45 remaining in the game, but Celeste Taylor's three-pointer cut the margin to six and Higgs' layup trimmed the Frog advantage to four at the 4:52 mark. Then, after UT's Taylor and TCU's Heard traded baskets, Taylor's being a three pointer, Holmes hit a layup and a subsequent free throw to tie the game at 60-60.
After TCU's Jayde Woods hit one of two free throws, Higgs hit a three-pointer at the :57 mark, giving Texas a 63-61 lead. Woods then made a layup with 38 seconds to go, knotting the score at 63-63. That set the stage for Berry's rebound and put-back basket – off of teammate Heard's miss -- for the TCU win.
KEY STATISTICS
- The Longhorns started Taylor, Collier, Holmes, Sutton and Jada Underwood.
- Texas leads the all-time series with TCU, 44-4.
- Texas shot 35 percent from the floor and TCU shot 36 percent.
- TCU prevailed in rebounding, 42-41.
- Texas got 23 points from its bench, 22 points in the paint, seven steals and five blocks
TEXAS HEAD COACH KAREN ASTON
I think this was obviously what you would consider a typical Big 12 game where points were rather hard to come by. I thought the teams looked kind of tight in the first half – both teams did. Neither team shot the ball very well. It boiled down to what I think a lot of the games in the league boil down to – little things make a difference. Some of it is loose-ball rebounds; we gave up way too many of those, and not enough extra possessions for ourselves. I think I've said this before, but the third quarter has not been our best quarter - probably in every game we've played. It was a problem tonight. I don't know what the reason is why we aren't coming out of halftime very well, but you can't go a stretch of four or five minutes and not play defense in our league or against anybody that's any good. We didn't play a 40-minute game today and TCU did, credit to them. They were more solid for 40 minutes than we were and that's who is going to win the majority of the games in this league.
TCU HEAD COACH RAEGAN PEBLEY
Great effort by our team. I think it was a great game if you were a basketball fan just to watch two teams really competing. Our games against Texas have been just like that only a different outcome over the last year. I think this is the fourth time in a year we've played them. We finished conference last year playing them regular season, opened up playing them in conference tournament and opened the conference playing them. So, these are two teams that have seen each other a lot and I think it looked like that a lot. Both teams had a really good sense of what each other were going to do. I'm proud of just the toughness that our team showed. We built that lead towards the end, timeout, and then three possessions that didn't go our way. We gave up a penetration and a score, turned the ball over and then fouled. I loved how we responded from that moment of self-inflicted adversity. That's something we've practiced a lot of just being tough and riding through runs. I think that's the first time in 43 years that we've won here. That's how hard it is and that's the quality of program Texas has had but really, really excited for this team. They deserved it.
UP NEXT
Texas travels to Ames, Iowa, on Monday to face Iowa State. Tip-off at Hilton Coliseum is slated for 8 p.m. CT and the game will be nationally televised by FS1. It will be available on radio at 105.3 FM in Austin and online at TexasSports.com/audio.
