DRC:poor shooting does in NT women

OldTimer · December 7, 2004

Women's basketball: Poor shooting does in North Texas

Mean Green falls to SMU, 60-46

08:57 AM CST on Monday, December 6, 2004

By Chuck Cox / Staff Writer

UNIVERSITY PARK — After racing out to a lightning-fast start and leading SMU by one point at halftime, North Texas forgot to bring something back onto the floor for the second half.

Its offense.

UNT shot an abysmal 14.3 percent (5-of-35) from the field in the final 20 minutes, helping the Mustangs claim a 60-46 victory at Moody Coliseum on Sunday afternoon.

The Mean Green (2-3) scored just 16 points in the second half, including only three in the final 7:24. Meanwhile, SMU (5-1) scored 16 points in that stretch alone to bust the game wide open. The Ponies were 11-of-12 from the free-throw line down the stretch.

The loss gave UNT a 1-3 record on its four-game road trip that included games against the University of Houston, Sam Houston State and No. 1 LSU.

Despite the loss, Mean Green sophomore forward Mia Ajekwu had career highs in both points (20) and rebounds (12), while recording her first career double-double.

"I thought they did a good job of taking us out of our offense," UNT head coach Tina Slinker said. "I don’t think they really did anything post defensive-wise. It was just putting a lot of pressure on [guard] Natalie Mireles and keeping us from getting into our offense."

After the teams traded buckets to start the game, UNT raced out to an 11-2 lead with a 9-0 run that started with a pair of buckets by Erika Bobo, who finished with 14 points. As a result of continuing to clog up the paint and force SMU to shoot from outside, the Mean Green increased the lead to 12 points.

But SMU turned the tables on UNT by starting to bury shots from the perimeter, as Sarah Davis hit three 3-pointers in the span of a little more than one minute to whittle the Mean Green lead down to one with 7:28 left in the first half.

"On the defensive end, we let them hit three 3s," Slinker said. "Sarah Davis is very capable of spotting up and hitting the 3. I think that really broke our back, as far as what we had accomplished defensively. Then, I think we had a letdown on the offensive end."

UNT countered with an Ajekwu putback and a DiDi Wali trey to get the lead back up to six, but SMU scored 10 of the next 11 points to take a three-point lead with 1:32 left in the first half. Ajekwu then hit a pair of free throws, and Bobo connected on a jumper with two seconds left to give UNT its lead back, 30-29, at the half.

"I think we came out too lax and not up and ready to play in the second half," Bobo said. "That’s usually a fault we always have. We’ve been trying to get better at that this year but we didn’t. They weren’t doing anything really different on defense. They went to some zone, but I think we should have capitalized on that with some of our shooters but we didn’t do that either."

Despite UNT’s shooting woes in the second half, SMU never led by more than five points until the 3:24 mark. In fact, after losing the lead on a pair of free throws by SMU’s Janielle Dodds early in the second half, the Mean Green reclaimed the lead at the 16:31 mark on a turn-around jumper by Kelsie Edwards.

But SMU took the lead for good moments later, as Shonte Roberts hit the first of two straight jumpers. From that point, UNT managed just 10 more points.

The Mustangs didn’t shoot particularly well in the second half either, going 8-of-30 (26.7 percent) from the field.

"We just kind of broke down," Ajekwu said. "Our offense wasn’t there and we didn’t follow. We’re not going to dwell on the loss. We know we’re better than this game. I was focused, but nothing matters if we don’t win."

Davis also had a double-double, leading the Mustangs in scoring with 11 points and rebounding with 12 boards. Katy Cobb added 11 points for SMU, which now owns a 22-13 lead in the all-time series with UNT.

"It’s really frustrating in a two-point game, three-point game, five-point game," Slinker said. "Just making one or two of those [shots] would have made all of the difference in the world. I felt like if we could get back to where we were tied or ahead, we could have taken a deep breath and gotten after it again, but we never could quite make that move."

The Mean Green returns home for just its second home game of the season on Wednesday — a 7 p.m. contest against Hampton.

CHUCK COX can be reached at 940-566-6872.