Texas A&M
Oklahoma City Univ.
No. 5 Aggies Defeat Oklahoma City In Exhibition, 74-51
Nov 08, 2014 | Women's Basketball
COLLEGE STATION- The No. 5 Texas A&M women's basketball team defeated Oklahoma City 74-51 in an exhibition game at Reed Arena. Tori Scott led Texas A&M with 13 points.
The Aggies and Stars traded baskets until the Aggies rattled off an 11-0 run midway through the first half, as Texas A&M sailed to a 42-17 lead at the half, then coasted to the 23-point victory.
Texas A&M has won its seven last exhibition games, including four wins over Oklahoma City, and 11 of its last 12 exhibition games, with the only loss in that span coming to the United States National Team in 2007.
Texas A&M had standout play from its three post players, who went a combined 9-for-10 from the field. Jada Terry had 10 points, her first double digit scoring effort in any game, regular season or exhibition. Khaalia Hillsman, who donned an Aggie uniform for the first time, had a Texas A&M Exhibition Game Record five blocks, a team-high nine rebounds, and six points off of 3-of-3 shooting. Rachel Mitchell also went 1-of-1 from the field.
Preseason All-American Jordan Jones had nine assists and four steals, to go along with five points. Both the nine assists and four steals were the second-most in a Texas A&M exhibition game since 2008.
Rateska Brown led Oklahoma City with 19 points.
The Aggies now head to the Maggie Dixon Classic in Chicago, Ill. to face No. 18 DePaul on Friday, November 14 at 6:30 p.m.—it is the third ranked game to open a season for the Aggies in the past six years and is broadcast on the Big East Digital Network and the Fox Sports GO app. The Aggies return to Reed Arena on Nov. 19 to host former Southwest Conference foe Rice at 7 p.m. on SEC Network + .
Enjoying watching Texas A&M freshman post Khaalia Hillsman @Big_Homieeee . Runs the floor, moves well, blocks shots & finishes.
— Rebecca Lobo (@RebeccaLobo) November 9, 2014
QUICKIE NOTES
- Texas A&M has won its seven last exhibition games, and 11 of its last 12, with the only loss in that span coming to the United States National Team in 2007.
- The Aggies have defeated Oklahoma City in exhibition games four times in the past six seasons.
- Tori Scott led the Aggies with 13 points
- Jada Terry had 10 points, her first collegiate double-digit scoring game in an exhibition or regular season game.
- Jordan Jones had nine assists, the second-most in a Texas A&M exhibition game (since 2008).
- Jones also had four steals, tied for the second-most in a Texas A&M exhibition game (since 2008)
Texas A&M Head Coach Gary Blair
Opening statement…
“It's an exhibition game. My goal going into the game was trying to stay consistent and trying to press to work on our conditioning. It wasn't all that effective. Oklahoma City has some very good, talented guards that handled our press pretty good, but we've seen what we have to work on. We want to play at that pace particularly early on in this game…we didn't want to show any of our stuff that we want to use against DePaul, because we saw a lot of zone- perhaps more than what I wanted to see. It gave us a chance to figure out what we needed to work on.”
On Taylor Cooper's 3-pointer attempts…
“If they were going to play zone, I needed to find out if she could consistently hit that shot. She hasn't played in two years. Like her dad just told me, she was as nervous as she was her freshman year. She just has to relax and let the game come to her and have a little bit of flow into the game. She'll be fine, but this gave me a good chance to see what she can do against the zone. We're going to see a lot of zone because of our size underneath at the five. That's why Walker is such a good midrange shooter, particularly off of our man to man offense. When you look at it, [Cooper's] 2 out of 5 is 40%. She's going to be fine.”
“Chelsea Jennings has been our most improved player this whole fall in practice. She's really coming into her own. She really didn't have a good shooting night (3-80), but she's been killing it during practice.”
“We're going to learn from this and go back to the drawing board. We're going play DePaul- a triple hitter. Their men are playing a 9 o'clock. It's a 4,000 seat arena, and it's sold out. We expect a huge crowd particularly in the second half when the men's team gets ready to play. You've got to learn how to play in the arenas as well as here. I was pleased with crowd.”
“We didn't need a 137-40 game. We needed a game in which we could teach off of. There are some things we did well; there are some things we didn't do well. It's our job now to go back and find a way to get this team ready to play on the road against a top 25 team.
On defensive performance tonight…
“I thought our press was pretty ineffective. I wanted to do the press for conditioning purposes, because we're going to need this against DePaul. They're going to press us for 40 minutes. Basically, we could've got a few more turnovers at the end if I would have stayed in it. By then, I wanted to see if we could play half-court defense in the last team minutes. They outscored us second half so obviously, we've got a little work to do.”
