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[MeanGreen61]

North Texas halts UL win streak

Showdown of league leaders goes Mean Green's way.

Bruce Brown

bbrown@theadvertiser.com

Saturday night at Earl K. Long Gym was strikingly similar to last Thursday night.

The only problem was, the same Louisiana Ragin' Cajuns women's squad that dismantled visiting Denver 76-50 in its Sun Belt Conference opener was throttled in similar fashion by the North Texas Mean Green by an embarrassing 70-47 count.

In a showdown of the teams with the best records in the league, North Texas controlled the contest from the start en route to a 12-2 record and a 2-0 start in league action.

Louisiana saw its 22-game home win streak broken, falling to 11-3, 1-1 before 542 fans.

"We need to understand that the target is on us," said coach J. Kelley Hall, whose Cajuns won the Sun Belt Western Division last season and reached the SBC Tournament finals. "People want to beat you.

"We did not play like champions and did not deserve to win the game. They pretty much did to us what we did to Denver on Thursday night."

The Cajuns hit just 19-of-62 shots and were out-rebounded 49-34. They didn't hit a 3-pointer until senior Ashley Blanche connected with 5:35 remaining in the game, and were 1-of-15 on treys.

"You've got to give them credit," said Hall, who did not allow players access to the media after the game. "They physically took us out of everything we wanted to do."

"Playing well early was one key for us," UNT coach Tina Slinker said. "They had 22 straight wins and had a lot of confidence playing here. We needed to have a good start.

"I thought a second key was our bench play."

"They have tremendous depth," Hall said.

Yolanda Jones scored 18 of her game-high 20 points after halftime to lead the Cajuns, and also had 11 rebounds, while Blanche managed 14 points after returning from her grandmother's funeral in Houston earlier in the day.

"Ashley was playing with a heavy heart," Hall said. "I told her I really appreciated her effort tonight. I have no problem with the way she played. That's not an easy thing, to play after burying someone you love. It hurt her to lose the game."

In fact, Blanche was the only member of the current squad to experience a home loss before Saturday night.

"We definitely felt Yolanda Jones was their best player," Slinker said. "She's a hard matchup, because she's really a '3' playing inside out. What she did late in the game was what we were afraid she would do all night.

"They've got five players on the floor who can all score. We're usually better on the defensive end. A lot of teams throw a zone at them, but with our depth we were able to maintain man-to-man defense the whole game."

"Going in, we wanted to stop their dribble-penetration, and make them shoot from the perimeter," Hall said. "They had been averaging 30 free throws a game, so we wanted to limit that. And, obviously, we needed to out-rebound them. We didn't do any of those things.

"We had some good looks early and couldn't hit. When you hit 1-of-15 3's, have one assist, get out-rebounded by 15 and let them shoot 30 free throws, you've got no chance."

It's a feeling Cajun opponents have known well, and one Hall's squad doesn't want to experience again.