By Jerry Briggs
Special for The JB Replay

Carla Brito and the South Florida Bulls controlled the action in the middle quarters Saturday night and held on at the end for a 69-63 road victory over the UTSA Roadrunners in American Conference women’s basketball.

Katie Davidson and Edyn Battle scored 17 points apiece and Brito produced her fourth straight double double (with 13 points and 12 rebounds) as the Bulls moved into sole possession of third place in the American.

Taking a big step toward securing a top-four finish and a double-bye into the postseason tournament, South Florida (16-10 overall and 9-4 in the American) also established an edge over sixth-place UTSA (12-12, 7-6).

The edge for the Bulls came in knowing that they are now 2-0 against the defending conference champions this season.

Last month, on Jan. 13 in Tampa, Fla., the Bulls built a 25-point halftime lead en route to a 70-53 victory over the Roadrunners.

In the first game, they knocked down 10 threes. On Saturday, they made only three, but they also shot 50.9 percent from the floor to compensate.

UTSA couldn’t keep up with that accuracy, as the Roadrunners hit only 31.9 percent on 23 of 74 shooting. The Bulls shut down Roadrunners forward Cheyenne Rowe, holding her to 10 points on five of 17.

“It was a hard-fought game,” UTSA coach Karen Aston said. “The difference was their transition game and their ability to get easier shots than what we were able to get.

“I thought we had to work extremely hard for every shot opportunity and bucket we got. On the other end of that, I thought they got a ton of easy buckets in transition.”

Ereauna Hardaway led UTSA with 17 points and eight assists. In addition, UTSA forward Idara Udo contributed 15 points and 12 rebounds. In the second quarter, Udo snared a rebound that gave her 500 for her UTSA career.

Down by two after the opening period, the Bulls rode the hot shooting of Davidson into a 33-26 halftime lead.

After the Roadrunners made a push after halftime, the Bulls outscored them 11-5 at the end of the third quarter, with Brito hitting two baskets in the surge.

Down by 12 going into the fourth, the cold-shooting Roadrunners couldn’t get any closer than double digits until the last two minutes of the game.

Hardaway capped a frantic late push with a three-pointer with 34.7 seconds left. When the shot swished, it sliced the South Florida lead to four points.

But after a timeout, the Bulls inbounded and worked 17 seconds off the clock before Battle was fouled. She sank the ensuing two free throws, plus two more with 6.7 seconds remaining, to secure the victory.

In the UTSA postgame news conference, Hardaway was asked about her own performance. She shrugged and noted, “We didn’t win. Winning’s all that matters to me.”

Udo was asked about UTSA’s run on South Florida that made it so close at the end. Specifically, whether the late push could give them confidence to beat the Bulls in the postseason tournament in a possible third matchup.

“It does,” she said. “But I don’t even think it’s about the runs. Like coach said, their transition games were killers. If we stop their transition game and contain (them) at the beginning of the game, it would have been a different outcome.

“I don’t think we’d have even needed to go on a run at the end of the game. I have a lot of confidence in our defense and our execution on the offensive side. So I think when we put both of those together, that’ll be good for us.”

Aston said if there is a third matchup with the Bulls, then the Roadrunners will have made a deep run in the tournament, and she said she’d be happy with that.

Comments that followed from the coach were delivered, with some passion, in regard to what needs to happen with her team moving forward.

“There were times tonight when I didn’t think we were as competitive as we needed to be,” Aston said. “Because, when you play a team like South Florida, that transitions the way they do, you can’t even pause. You can’t take a break and feel sorry for yourself because something didn’t go right.

“It’s play to play. High-level games are supposed to be like that. But when you look at the stat sheet (tonight), we got more shot attempts. We beat ’em on the three-point line. We beat ’em on the free-throw line. We beat ’em in rebounding. And they turned the ball over more than we did.”

At that point, she drew a contrast in what happened Saturday night on UTSA’s home court, as compared to the earlier meeting in Florida.

“We got our ass kicked in Tampa,” she said. “And, as to Ereauna’s credit for noticing, the difference in the game (tonight) was that the ball went in the basket more for them, and I understand why. That was (their) transition, and we’ll have to figure out how to slow that down if we have to play ’em again.

“But, we got whipped in every category in Tampa. So, I’m extremely pleased with the progress we’ve made. We just got to get back to work. We got games to win. We got to get in the tournament.”

UTSA will have five more games remaining to clinch a spot in the 10-team tournament, which is scheduled March 10-14 in Birmingham, Ala.

Records

South Florida 16-10, 9-4
UTSA 12-12, 7-6

Coming up

UTSA at Wichita State, Feb. 21, 1 p.m.

Notable

South Florida pushed the pace at every opportunity, outscoring UTSA 25-4 in fast break points.

UTSA junior Idara Udo became the 18th player in program history to reach 500 and the first since Elyssa Coleman in 2024.

Additionally, Udo also became the fourth UTSA player to record double-digit offensive rebounds in a game — she had 10 against the Bulls — and the first since Tesha Smith set the program record with 12 in 2017.

First half

The Bulls turned up the intensity and rallied from down two after the first quarter to a 12-point lead late in the second.

UTSA, in turn, rallied in the last two minutes on a 7-0 run to cut into the deficit. But the damage had been done, and the Bulls went into the dressing room at intermission with a 33-26 lead.

For South Florida, Davidson led the charge in the second period when she scored 10 of her 12 first-half points.