Late Rally by New Mexico Overwhelms Lady Texans Down the Stretch

December 3, 2010
MIDLAND, Texas - The South Plains College Lady Texans had a four game winning streak snapped Friday evening when they fell to New Mexico Junior College in the semi-final game of the Western Junior College Athletic Conference (WJCAC) pre-conference tournament. The 78-61 defeat drops the SPC women to 6-3 on the season and they will face the loser of the 7:30 p.m. game between Midland and Howard College at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, December 4th.

After falling into a 5-0 hole early, SPC countered with two buckets to come to within one point and took their first lead of the half seven minutes into the contest when a Brittney Wilkerson field goal gave the Lady Texans a one-point advantage, 9-8.

The next nine minutes would feature four more lead changes and three tie scores until New Mexico went on a 9-4 run to end the first half, going into the locker room with a five point lead, 32-27.

Lauren McKinney nailed two three point buckets and Brittney Wilkerson followed that up with another to bring the Lady Texans to within one point in the opening minutes of the second half.

Ashley Roberts, who scored a game high 25 points, answered a 7-0 Lady T-Bird run with yet another three point basket to bring SPC to within 5, 44-39, with 13:46 remaining on the clock. Two minutes later she hit another three to make it a six point ballgame.

The Lady Texans found themselves down by 12 points with ten minutes to go in the game and battled back to within six points over the next 3 ½ minutes. That was as close as they would get as New Mexico stormed out to a 20-5 run to put the game out of reach and ultimately win by a score of 78-61. New Mexico remains undefeated on the season, improving to 12-0.

Roberts made 8-of-14 shots from the field, including 4-of-10 from downtown and 5-of-6 from the charity stripe to finish with 25. Wilkerson ended up with 17 points, making 6-of-11 shots.