'Sense of urgency' comes through for Women's Basketball
Feb. 27, 2012
Natalie England, TexasSports.com AUSTIN, Texas - Finally, the Texas Women's Basketball team was content to let the numbers do the talking, and on Saturday night, the outcome spoke for itself. The Longhorns attacked rival Oklahoma from the opening tip and never relinquished the energy or emotion in a rousing 87-62 victory at the Frank Erwin Center. UT forced 25 turnovers, the most for the Longhorns in Big 12 play, and 18 of those were steals. In fact, seven UT players logged at least one steal against the Sooners. "We played with a sense of urgency that you would expect a team in our position to play with, so I'm proud of the team," said fifth-year coach Gail Goestenkors, who earned her 100th victory at Texas with the OU triumph. "Our 18 steals -- that was effort. We were determined to get the hustle plays." The Longhorns took the lead with more than 15 minutes still to play in the first half and never looked back. OU could never mount an offensive flow, due in part to UT's ferocious attacking mindset. "Defensively we started off working our butts off, and you could tell that we were having fun. When we have fun we are a really hard team to stop," said guard Chelsea Bass, who finished with 13 points. "We know that our backs are against the wall, and we came out and were playing together. That was the main thing -- we worked really hard on both ends, crashing the boards, playing defense." Bass was one of four Longhorns to finish in double-figure scoring. Chassidy Fussell led the way with 30 points to match a career-high. Yvonne Anderson had 12 points, a team-high nine rebounds and a career-high eight steals.
Ashleigh Fontenette scored 18 points to go along with seven rebounds and three assists. Nineteen of UT's 30 field goals were assisted, and UT scored 42 points in the paint primarily on drives to the basket thanks to the 40-minute aggression supplied by UT's guards. The Longhorns now have two regular season Big 12 games remaining, with a road trip to Missouri on Tuesday night and then a home contest against defending national champion Texas A&M on Sunday afternoon. "We just have to take it one game at a time, and we need to treat every game like it is our last," Goestenkors said. "We can't afford to look ahead and say that we need to win this or that. We just need to win the next game -- the game that is in front of us. Now the only game that I'm concerned with at this moment is Missouri, period." |
|
