By Jerry Briggs
Special for The JB Replay
SAN MARCOS – As the UTSA women’s basketball team bus rolled north-bound on Interstate 35 Saturday morning, Coach Karen Aston’s phone rang. It was Roadrunners football coach Jeff Traylor, who had something to say.
On speaker phone, the message came through loud and clear. “He said we have to beat Texas State by 39 because that’s how much they lost by,” UTSA guard Sidney Love recalled.
The Roadrunners’ women couldn’t quite erase the sting of the football team’s 49-10 loss to the Bobcats in September, nor could they quite win by 39, but they made an emphatic statement nevertheless that they’re ready for all comers in the American Athletic Conference.
Closing out their non-conference schedule, the defense-minded Roadrunners blew the game open in the second quarter and built leads as large as 23 points in the second half, before they ran off the floor at Strahan Arena with a 70-54 victory.
With their first win over the Bobcats since 2016, the Roadrunners improved to 9-2 going into next week’s AAC opener at Charlotte. The win-loss record is the best in school history going into conference play. Moreover, six of their victories have come by double digits.
“We’ve got our foot on the gas and we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon,” Love said. “We just have our eye on the prize. We have our eye on the main goal, which is to become a championship team.”
Jordyn Jenkins led a balanced attack by producing 17 points to lead the Roadrunners, who shot 49.1 percent from the floor and had 11 players hit the scoring column. Love added 15 points and Cheyenne Rowe had 10 off the bench as UTSA improved to 5-2 away from home and 3-2 on the road.
Point guard Nina De Leon Negron contributed nine points, eight assists and six rebounds. A graduate transfer from Incarnate, she also had five steals.
The Bobcats entered the game on a four-game winning streak, but they couldn’t get much going offensively, shooting 34.6 percent. The Bobcats committed 21 turnovers in the face of a pressing and trapping defense by the Roadrunners.
For most of the game, UTSA players just looked more alive, more energized. It was particularly evident in the second quarter, when they outscored the Bobcats 27-12 en route to a 39-20 lead. Jenkins said the motivation stemmed partly from recent history in the I-35 rivalry.
“We haven’t beat Texas State in the last two years that we’ve been here, and I think it’s been even longer,” she said. “So, we knew that we had to come out here and punch ’em in the face. So, it worked out.”
Texas State, in fact, had won the last six meetings and eight of the last nine. UTSA hadn’t won in the series since a 2016 game in San Antonio. UTSA hadn’t won a game in San Marcos since 2013. For most of the afternoon, the Roadrunners played with pace that the Bobcats’ couldn’t match.
“I just think our kids like to play up-tempo,” UTSA coach Karen Aston said. “I think this game, particularly, we had a lot of good energy off the bench. I thought people came off the bench and added energy, enthusiasm … It wasn’t always pretty, but I thought the kids played with a lot of juice today.”
First half
The Roadrunners employed defensive pressure to create several easy baskets en route to a dominant second quarter and a 39-20 lead on the Bobcats.
Playing on the Bobcats’ home court, the Roadrunners led by four points after one low-scoring quarter, and then exploded out of the gates with 13 unanswered points to start the second.
Jenkins started it off by hitting a three-pointer, then made a steal guarding an inbounds pass and scored five points overall in the run, which lifted the Roadrunners into a 25-8 lead.
Freshman guard Damara Allen also made her mark, scoring four points in the streak, one on a fast-break layup and another on a jumper, also at the end of a breakout.
After Jaylin Foster scored inside for the Bobcats, the Roadrunners scored eight more unanswered, including four by Sidney Love and four more by Cheyenne Rowe.
As Rowe deftly sank a left-hander on a post move, UTSA had its largest lead of the half at 33-12.
In all, UTSA’s defense made four steals and created six Texas State turnovers in the period. On the other end, the Roadrunners hit 11 of 19 shots from the field for 57.9 percent.
It was easily one of the better quarters of the season for the Roadrunners, who open AAC play at Charlotte on Dec. 29. The team’s AAC home opener is on Jan. 1 against the UAB Blazers.
Records
UTSA 9-2
Texas State 6-4
Coming up
UTSA at Charlotte, Dec. 29, 1 p.m.
UAB at UTSA, Jan. 1, 6:30 p.m.
Notable
Kansas State transfer Ja’Mia Harris led the Bobcats in scoring with 10 points on four of seven shooting from the field. Takeira Ramey contributed nine points and four assists. Western Kentucky transfer Jaylin Foster, Texas State’s leading scorer, had a tough day by hitting only one of nine from the floor. The former standout from San Antonio-area Steele High School finished with six points. Incarnate Word transfer Destiny Terrell, another weapon for the Bobcats, finished with two points and eight rebounds.