ST. GEORGE, Utah – The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) Vaqueros women's basketball team lost 81-55 Thursday to the Utah Tech (UTU) Trailblazers in a Western Athletic Conference (WAC) game at Burns Arena.
Freshman
Jayda Holiman led UTRGV (6-22, 5-14 WAC) with 15 points and a career-high tying five three-pointers. Junior
Tierra Trotter scored 12 points with seven rebounds and four assists. Junior
Kade Hackerott added nine points with six rebounds and senior
Zariah Sango tabbed a career-high tying nine rebounds.
UTU (17-13, 11-8 WAC) made 18 three-pointers, shooting 43.9% from behind the arc.
Maggie McCord led all scorers with 18 points, also pacing UTU with eight rebounds, and
Maddie Warren scored 17.
Calyn Dallas and
Breaunna Gillen added 11 and 10 points, respectively.
Hackerott carried the Vaqueros in a defensive first quarter. She scored six points on a trio of nifty jump shots, but UTRGV had trouble with turnovers and the Trailblazers went up by 10. The Vaqueros played fast defense and rebounded well in the opening minutes, but Utah Tech got hot late on offense and held an 18-11 lead at the quarter break after a needed three-pointer from Holiman in the final seconds.
UTRGV controlled the pace to open the second quarter, going on a 13-0 run and keeping UTU scoreless for the first four and a half minutes of the frame to jump on top, 21-18. Trotter was key in the run, hitting a three-pointer to knot it at 18-18, then notching a block and a pull-up jumper for the lead.
The Trailblazers used an 8-0 run to regain the lead, then the Vaqueros responded by turning up the speed of the game. Holiman and graduate student
Ashton McCorry drilled three-pointers on consecutive possessions to make it 27-26 in favor of UTRGV. Utah Tech closed the half on an 11-0 run, making three three-pointers in a row to anchor the 37-27 halftime lead.
Trotter's midrange game stayed productive to start the third quarter, but Utah Tech's defense and rebounding improved, leading to a massive scoring flurry. The Trailblazers made five three-pointers in the third, and their 13
thdeep ball of the game grew their advantage to 58-34 with less than two minutes in the frame. Holiman answered with a late three of her own and freshman
Ja'Shelle Johnson got in the box score with a pull-up jumper, but UTU took a comfortable 60-39 lead into the final quarter.
Holiman hit two more highlight-reel threes in the fourth, but the Trailblazers continued to score at a high efficiency and never took their foot of the gas as they stayed in the driver's seat to the final whistle.
UTRGV's last regular season game is Saturday at 3 p.m. at Southern Utah for a chance to clinch a spot in the WAC Tournament. Fans unable to attend in person can watch domestically on
ESPN+ or internationally via
WAC International.
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