Rice Women’s Basketball bounced back from a regular season loss at UAB, getting the better of the Blazers in the AAC Tournament to survive and advance.
Defense set the tone for Rice women’s basketball in their opening game of the American Athletic Conference Tournament against UAB. They gave up 87 points to the Blazers in Birmingham in February, the start of an extended losing streak that dropped the Owls to the No. 10 seed in this year’s field.
“We started out fast,” Destiny Jackson said after the win. “Just having that mentality that mindset, the want-to the hunger to want to win and not like play to not lose, but to play to win.”
Rice held UAB to 29 first-half points on 31 percent shooting, locking down the perimeter and controlling the boards as they set the tone for what was to come. Rice took charge in earnest midway through the second quarter. After a 6-0 run to start the frame, UAB would convert just two field goals through the rest of the period as Rice outscored them 18-5 to take a nine-point advantage into the break.
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Rice leaned on the combination of Malia Fisher and Sussy Ngulefac to lengthen their lead in the third, firmly putting the game into the Owls’ control, a stark difference from how things went the first time against UAB.
“I really think the difference between this past game and the one before is that all 15 of us had the mentality that we had the capabilities to beat anybody if we set our mind to it,” Fisher said. “Everybody came out and executed to the best of their abilities, and everybody did what they were supposed to do.”
That duo of Fisher and Ngulefac accounted for 16 of the Owls’ 20 points, getting ahead by as many as 19 points and giving the Owls line of sight to the next round of the tournament. Following an uneventful fourth quarter, Rice solidified those aspirations, punching their ticket to the next round and a rematch against North Texas.
Final Box | Rice 71 – UAB 56
FINAL | @RiceWBB 71 – UAB 56 pic.twitter.com/42T5WK7EpN
— The Roost (@AtTheRoost) March 11, 2024
What They’re Saying
“We’re on a mission. It doesn’t matter who we play and what happened in the previous games because everybody is win or go home, but we got a little bit of a bad taste in our mouth from the last time we played North Texas so that should fuel us. We did a lot of good things in that game. We forced a lot of turnovers. We had a lot of steals. We had a lot of offensive rebounds. We held them to a low scoring night, but that doesn’t mean anything. We got to come out and do it again and we got to do more than what we did the last time.
Whoever we’re playing we’re going to be ready to face, regardless of what the outcome was the last time, because we have a mission that we’re trying to accomplish.” – Head coach Lindsay Edmonds
Key takeaway | Starters strong
Rice women’s basketball leaned heavily on its bench this season, more so than any other team in the AAC. With the season on the line, they flipped the script, riding their starters to a dominant win to keep their season alive. The Owls averaged 25.2 bench points per game entering this contest.
When the fourth quarter began, the Rice bench had totaled five points, picking up the bulk of their 12 total bench points in the game after the team had established a sizable lead.
Our team is deep. I’ve said it all year long. When we show up, we can go deep into our bench and not have a huge drop off, but also, when our starters get us off to a good start, there’s where we’re at our best. ”
Fisher had a team-high 20 points. Jackson was right behind with 14. Ngulefac has 12. No bench player had more than five. That isn’t necessarily prescriptive of how this team has to play moving forward, but what Edmonds said is certainly true. When the Rice starters play well, this team’s ceiling is tremendous.
Up Next: vs North Texas on Monday, March 11 at 6:00 pm
