LONGVIEW, Texas – Closing out the first half of American Southwest conference East Division play, the LeTourneau University women's basketball team saw a game-opening 10-0 run that put the YellowJackets in a hole they could never recover from in an 82-61 loss to the University of Texas-Tyler on Saturday, January 27th inside of Solheim Arena.
With the loss, LETU falls to 3-16 overall and 0-12 in the ASC while the Patriots picked up their second win of the weekend to improve to 12-7 overall and 8-4 in the ASC.
"You can look at the scoring throughout the quarters and its only one or two points in the second, third, and fourth quarters, but a big point differential in the first quarter and that hurt us today" said head coach
Cassi Rozanski in a post-game interview. "We then had to dig deep and try to comeback which is never easy to do after digging ourselves a hole like that." "It's hard for a coach to say that they're proud of their team following a 20-point loss, but I am proud of the girls for not taking the easy way out after falling behind 23-8 but instead they didn't quit and kept fighting.
Outside of the final score, stats for both squads would be similar to each other as both the YellowJackets and Patriots scored 30 points in the paint with LeTourneau holding a 42-41 advantage in the final rebounding tally. UTT finished from the field with a 46.6 percent (27-58) shooting percentage and went 21-for-30 from the free throw line while LETU went 25-of-68 from the field (36.8 percent) and saw a lost opportunity at the charity stripe following a six-for-20 (30.0 percent) mark.
Sophomore
Alexandria Thorne continued to be a spark in the YellowJacket offense, finishing with a career-high 19 points which led all scorers in the game. The Flint, Texas native also had six rebounds with nine of her 19 points coming from three. Elsewhere for LeTourneau, freshman
Keauna Whitfield had a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds while
Jaila Leaven scored 11 points to go along with two assists. Texas-Tyler was led by a team-high 15 points from Carissa Spiker.
The 10-0 run to open the game by UTT would see the YellowJackets be held scoreless for the first 5:36 of the game before a Whitfield free throw finally got LETU in the scoring column. Five more points for Texas-Tyler made the score 15-1 before LeTourneau's first field goal of the game coming from Leaven with 3:06 left in the first quarter. The Patriots managed to push their lead to as many as 18 in the first quarter, but saw a Reed triple fall for LETU as the horn sounded to make the score 23-8 at the end of the first.
In the second quarter, the two squads would trade field goals with free throws for a majority of the period, with the UTT lead growing to 20 at 33-13 with 4:21 left in the first half and again at 38-18 with just 2:25 remaining in the quarter. Determined to close out the half on a strong note, LETU would get buckets by Thorne and Whitfield in the final 1:20 to go along with a Whitfield free throw with the final five points going to LeTourneau to make the score 39-23 at intermission.
A strong start to the second half on both ends saw shots falling for both the Patriots and YellowJackets with LETU climbing their way back to a 13-point deficit at 43-30 following a Thorne triple before seeing four-straight free throws put the score at 47-30. Thorne responded by hitting another three and getting a rebound and layup on LeTourneau's next trip down the floor to get the YellowJackets within 12, but the UTT lead would be pushed back out to 18 which is where it would stand at the end of the quarter.
The fourth quarter would play out similarly to the way that the second played out as LeTourneau would again start seeing shots fall on their end of the floor, but could not contain the Patriot offense. Back-to-back three's to open the quarter gave Texas-Tyler their largest lead of the game at 67-43, with LETU getting no closer than 19 the rest of the way as the Patriots managed to have an answer for every YellowJacket point in the period.
These same two squads will match up again on Thursday, February 1st in Tyler with the game serving as the next time out for both teams. Tip-off will be at 5:30 p.m. at the Herrington Patriot Center.
