Joel "Jewlz" Morris
Sports Editor
Texas A&M University-San Antonio Jaguar women’s basketball team shut down the University of The Southwest Mustangs, winning 92-46 to improve 6-3 in the season and 2-0 in the Red River Athletic Conference.
“We force so many turnovers, we get so many points off defense,” A&M-San Antonio head coach Chris Minner said.
Replicating the same success they had last game, the Jaguars scored 32 points off turnovers while racking up 19 steals.
With the consistent defensive performances igniting victories, sophomore forward Talaiyah Andrews believes the Jags are the best defensive team in the conference.
“On defense we trap, so I feel like our press and stuff is a real big impact to our offense,” Andrews said.
Jaguar sophomore guards Tamya Whitemon and Victoria Adeniran, along with Andrews, each had four steals.
Coming into the matchup, Minner planned to exploit the Jaguars’ clear size advantage over the Mustangs.
Focusing the offense around Andrews, who finished with 11 points and junior forward Aniyah Lewis, who finished with 12 points. Both forwards contributed to the 50 total points in the paint.
The height discrepancy was noticeable for Andrews as well.
“I was pretty much taller than a lot of them,” Andrews said. Which led to her assertiveness in the first half, scoring 9 of her 11 points.
We saw on film that they were kind of small,” Minner said. “We had to take advantage of that because we can go inside out.”
As the Jags continued to score in the paint, the approach was to play inside while being a threat from the perimeter. paid off as the Jags had sophomore forward Emily Carranco and Whitemon make multiple 3-pointers.
“We knew we were going to get a lot of shots because of their defense,” Whitemon said. “It was just a matter of making them.”
The Jags are sitting in third place in conference standings and see a perfect opportunity to get better with the semester ending and focusing solely on basketball.
“We’re going to get in the gym every day, we have all the time,” Andrews said. “Get shots up, work with each other, basically put in the work to win.”
The Jaguars will play their next game at 5:30 p.m. Dec. 11 in Tyler against Texas College.
