By Jerry Briggs
Special for The JB Replay
The UTSA women’s basketball program under sixth-year coach Karen Aston has in many ways been built around a philosophy that defense holds a team together during stressful moments. That it ultimately wins games and leads to championship celebrations.
UTSA coach Karen Aston took a team seeded sixth into last year’s American Conference tournament and won four games in four days for the postseason title.. – File photo by Joe Alexander
“We’re a program that has an identity of playing defense,” Aston said Monday, in remarks aired on the American Conference’s 2026-27 season preview on ESPN+. “I think it travels.”
After three straight years of appearances in national postseason tournaments, a regular-season conference title in 2024-25 and a postseason crown last year, UTSA has been picked to finish second behind Rice in the American’s preseason poll.
UTSA may need to identify and nurture some consistent offensive weapons in order to make a serious run for a second straight trip to the NCAA tournament.
But, if everyone stays healthy, the team led by returning starters Idara Udo, Damara Allen and Adriana Robles might be as good on the defensive end as any that Aston has produced with the Roadrunners.
“First thing I’ll say is, I do appreciate the returners,” Aston said. “In this day and age, to return three starters that very well could have moved on, says a lot about our culture. It says a lot about them, personally, in their commitment to wanting to hold up another trophy … for the third year in a row.
“It really says a lot about our (coaching) staff in general. I’m excited about this group. We’re not there right now. But I’m super excited about the wrinkles that we can probably put in defensively. We are hopefully a little deeper (this season).
“We had a ton of injuries last year, and really that was part of our roller coaster we rode on during the conference season.
“We’ve got a little more length than we’ve had in my tenure. So (our) ability to do some different things defensively. We haven’t really had that. We definitely didn’t have it last year. I’m looking forward to kind of playing with that a little.”