West Virginia Upsets No. 12 Texas Women’s Basketball 64-58

By James Schleicher

AUSTIN, Texas — Led by a hot-handed redshirt junior Tynice Martin, the West Virginia Mountaineers came into the Erwin Center on Tuesday night and upset No. 12 Texas Women’s basketball 64-58.

“It’s a really really tough night for us,” head coach Karen Aston said. “It’s a struggle sometimes for us to score. I think when our best players have a rough night we’ve got a short bench and it’s hard to find a solution for that.”

Aston said that the team’s 21 turnovers played the biggest role in the team’s struggles.

“We had some uncharacteristic turnovers,” Aston said. “Just things that I don’t know really where the ball was going. We were very out of sync as far as our turnovers were concerned…Just trying to do too much.”

Texas (17-4, 7-2 Big 12) held a 9-4 lead early in the first, then West Virginia (15-5, 6-3 Big 12) went on a 14-0 run and it went all downhill from there for the Longhorns.

“I really thought where we got in trouble was how we played the first half defensively,” Aston said. “We let Tynice get going and that kind of gave their whole team confidence.”

Martin’s shooting prowess came to the forefront early in the game when she scored nine straight points to help drive a 14-0 Mountaineer run in the first quarter. Martin lead West Virginia in scoring with a season-best 27 points.

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“She’s a very good scorer,” junior gaurd Sug Sutton said. “Whenever she gets space she’s going to shoot it and she’s very efficient with what she does.”

With her team struggling in the first half Aston tried all kinds of combinations of players to try to spark some sort of run in the first half. At halftime, West Virginia held a 38-27 lead, which they extend to a 14 point lead midway through the third quarter.

Texas found a slight spark when Sutton a buzzer beating put-back floater to end the 3rd quarter and cut WVU’s lead to eight.

Texas finally found some energy in the fourth quarter and closed the lead to two points with 6:43 to play (51-49). West Virginia quickly re-stretched it’s lead to eight in large part due-Texas not staying out of it’s way and causing costly fouls.

With a 1:20 left the Longhorns had the gap closed to 62-58, however a missed layup by junior Forward Joyner Holmes and two costly turnovers in the final 33 seconds lead to the eventual six-point Mountaineer victory.

“This is a big road win for our program,” a hoarse West Virginia head coach Mike Carey said. “We tried to give them the game at the end, but were able to hold on.”

The win marked the first time the Mountaineers have won in Austin.

Holmes led Texas in scoring with 16 points on the night. She also had six rebounds.

Senior forward Jatarie White scored 15 points, on 6-of-7 shooting from the field, and also pulled down eight rebounds, while junior guard Sug Sutton recorded 13 points, eight rebounds and four assists.

Texas struggled to get shots to go down as they hit 18-of-49 (36.7%) from the field and just 1-of-13 (7.7%) from 3-point range.

When asked about what Aston would talk about with her players as they continue Big 12 play and face a top-ranked Baylor squad Monday, Aston responded that they would talk about Oklahoma and take it one game at a time.

“We go to Oklahoma, traditionally a place that we have really struggled at and we’re going to try to win our next game,” Aston said. “It’s an ugly loss. None of us are very happy about it. We’ll get to practice on Wednesday and try to solve some of the issues and be ready to play Oklahoma.”

From here Texas heads on the road to face Oklahoma in Norman on Saturday at 3 p.m., and will then return home to play No. 1 ranked Baylor on Monday Feb. 4th.

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