Trailing 71-70 with 47 seconds left in the game, the Lady
Raiders had to do something to prevent their sixth-straight loss.
Texas Tech brought the ball down the court and Monique Smalls put up a shot with 24 seconds left, missed but Jordan Barncastle was right
there to gather the rebound put it back up for the basket, the foul and the
lead.
The senior would finish off the three-point play, then
following a missed three-pointer by Texas’ Chassidy Fussell, Smalls put the icing on the cake of the 75-71 win
with two free throws with only eight seconds left, helping snap the Lady
Raiders five-game skid.
“Important, there’s our backs against the wall, that sense
of urgency,” Tech head coach Kristy Curry said about how important the win was
for the team’s confidence. “I just bragged on them, and made them laugh, and
said ‘well we’ve improved, we only had five in a row instead of six’. So you
try to find the positive in every day, and I think this is what they needed and
so badly we wanted it for them.”
Despite being close at the end, the game did not begin in
the same fashion as Tech came out of the gates running, and ran the lead up on
Texas with an 11-0 run to start the game.
Following the game Texas head coach Gail Goestenkors
said her squad has started a couple of games this season in this fashion and it
has never ended well.
“I’m very frustrated, we’ve got to make a change, we’ve got
to find a different way, because this is about the fourth game that we’ve
started off and had either zero or two points at the first media timeout,” she
said. “Looked like we weren’t ready to play, Tech was very ready to play and I
give them a lot of credit. They came right at us and we were just lazy and
fouled and turned the ball over. So something has to give, something’s got to
change because when we start games off like this we lose.”
Texas responded with some three-point shooting and points in
the paint as the half closed the Longhorns were within two of the lead trailing
only 33-31.
The Lady Raiders maintained the lead until the 7:53 mark in
the second half when the Longhorns took a slim 58-57 lead on a jumper by Yvonne Anderson, who finished the game going 8-for-14 from the field and scoring 18
points, which was second on the team.
Texas would lead in the game only one other time as with 47
seconds left Ashleigh Fontenette hit back-to-back free-throws to give the
Longhorns a 71-70 lead.
After a few timeouts, the Lady Raiders time was running out,
but with 23 seconds left in regulation Smalls missed a jumper, but Jordan
Barncastle, who got her first start since January 22, 2011, came down with her
10th rebound of the game and put it back up for the bucket and the
foul.
The senior completed the three-point play, giving her 19
points on the afternoon, and gave Tech the two-point lead. The double-double
Barncastle recorded was her first since November 22, 2008 against Lamar.
Following the miss by Fussell, who
led the Longhorns with 19 points and was 3-for-9 from three-point range, the
Lady Raiders sealed the win with free throws by Smalls to get the 75-71 win.
With the win the Lady Raiders snapped a five-game losing
streak against the Longhorns and halted their five-game skid in league play.
“I think it’s really cool to go into these next couple of
games with this momentum and kind of get into the swing of things again,” Barncastle
said. “It was nice to something we haven’t done in a while, haven’t won here
against them and hopefully we’ll go there and win again.”
The next game for the Lady Raiders is at home against No. 14
Texas A&M on Wednesday, and Barncastle said with this win it will give them
something they haven’t for about two weeks – momentum.
“It was a tough one, tough loss for them, tough win for us,”
she said. “I think it’ll prepare us for Wednesday and we’re just looking ahead,
and taking it one game at a time.
“I definitely think this gives us momentum and positive
encouragement we needed.”