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The Rice Thresher
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by Jason Gershman thresher editorial staff Will the real women's basketball team please stand up? Last weekend, the Lady Owls played 40 minutes of some of their best basketball since Western Athletic Conference play began in early January. Unfortunately, those 40 minutes were spread over two games. Friday at Southern Methodist University, it appeared for 30 minutes that the team would avenge its Jan. 21 home loss to the Mustangs. Rice shot a season-best 57 percent from the floor in the first half and appeared to have solved the offensive woes which have plagued the team all season. But with a 58-45 lead with 9 minutes, 53 seconds remaining in the game, the Lady Owls went ice cold. SMU ran away with an 86-71 win, and Rice lost a key opportunity to score a win against an upper-division WAC team. "We need to play to our capabilities for 40 minutes," head coach Cristy McKinney said. "At SMU, we let one get away. I can't tell you why for 30 minutes we were as good as we were and then we fell apart. I know we didn't want to have that happen to us. We've just got to learn how to finish things up." The Owls continued their cold shooting for 30 minutes against the University of Texas at El Paso at Autry Court Sunday. With 9:12 left in the game, the Lady Owls trailed the Miners 43-31. Disaster loomed - a home loss to a 7-13 UTEP squad would be near-impossible to recover from. But the Lady Owls cut the deficit to just one point with 4:47 remaining after sophomore guard Kara Liggett hit three of four foul shots which stemmed from a double-technical foul called against UTEP coach Sandra Rushing. Junior forward LaTonya Sam followed up with back-to-back three-pointers to give the Lady Owls a lead that they would not relinquish en route to a 53-47 victory. "We had some good shots early in the game, but they just didn't fall," McKinney said. "LaTonya stepped up and made two huge threes and that's what made the difference. Our whole team's been inconsistent and today we were looking for someone to step up and be a threat offensively and she was the one that did it." Sam, who sat out last season after transferring from Stephen F. Austin State University, finished the game with a team-high 13 points, one point short of her season best. "Coach always says that she needs someone to come off the bench and take control and today I was the one," Sam said after the game. "We have a young team right now, and eventually we'll put 40 minutes of good basketball together." The Lady Owls had one of their best weekends of the year on the boards, an area in which Rice has struggled during WAC play. Junior center Daneesh McIntosh grabbed a career high 13 rebounds against SMU. Junior forward Aarika Florus pulled down 10 boards against UTEP, and senior center Kenya Tuttle grabbed 18 rebounds for the weekend. The Lady Owls shot just 33 percent in each half of their victory over UTEP, but in the second half Rice's intensity helped the team outrebound the Miners 20-14 and hold UTEP to just 14 points for the period. "If we were going to go down, we were going to go down fighting," Florus said. "We were not going to just give up a win on our home court. In the second half, we stepped it up while their posts got in foul trouble. All the posts and the guards fought hard today. If we can get the guards and posts to come together in one game, we're going to be unstoppable. Until then, we're going to struggle a little bit."
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