Saturday's Sports Update: Women's basketball gains first conference win

By Yan Digilov     2/12/09 6:00pm

Junior Tara Watts led the Owls with 15 points this afternoon as the women's basketball team snagged its first victory in 11 games, gaining their first conference win and improving to 6-19 overall. Rice dominated the University of Tulane (14-12, 6-6 C-USA) in a complete role-reversal from the last time the two squads met. The Green Wave won that match up by 28 points on Jan. 11, whereas today the Owls led by as many as 18 points and finished the game with a 62-54 victory.

Tulane was stunned and subdued in the first half as Rice got off to one of its strongest starts of the season. Everything that had been going wrong for the squad, seemed to go right, and the Owls built a 12-0 lead after only four minutes of play.

Freshman point guard D'Frantz Smart sent a strong message that she was back in action with a three-pointer to start off the game. She finished the game with eight points on less than a minute's rest in the whole game, a first since returning from injury.

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Senior forward Emery Carter contributed four points to the opening run and established herself early as a strong-low post presence, which had recently been a persistent gap in the Owls' offense. She finished with 10 points. Sophomore forward Morgan Mayse forced the Green Wave to defend two posts. Along with a solid defensive effort, she also finished with 13 points of her own.

Finally, Watts also seemed to climb out of a recent shooting slump, hitting an early three-pointer that forced the Green Wave to respect the Owls' outside shooting. Watts finished with a game-high 15 points.

More importantly for the Owls, the squad maintained the role of the aggressor for the entire first half. Tulane finally got on the board with 15:45 left in the half and began running a full court press. However, Rice was able to adjust early on to the pressure, and responded with a strong half-court two-man trap.

Rice finished the game with 13 steals, seven of which came from Smart. The defensive effort kept Tulane from gaining enough momentum to bridge the widening gap between the squads, and Rice went to the locker room with a 34-20 lead.

"I was fearful because we hadn't subbed much in the first half," head coach Greg Williams said. "We have come out flat in the second half in the passed."

Williams' fears were eventually realized. The Owls could not finish the game without at least one second-half breakdown.

They maintained stifling defense throughout the last 20 minutes and led by 16 points with 2:30 left in the game, after a three-pointer from Watts made it 58-41. However, the visiting team summoned enough full-court pressure to make the game tight.

"We just had to keep switching up our press breaks to try and beat it," Watts said. "It didn't work that well."

Rice soon became incapable of inbounding the ball. A Tulane free throw and back-to-back steals that each resulted in three-pointers from Indira Kaljo cut the Rice lead to 10 with 2:00 left on the clock.

The Owls were able to get the ball across half court a minute later, but a missed shot from Mayse gave Tulane the ball. The Green Wave cut the lead to five with 50 seconds left, putting the home team on their heels.

"I did not think they were going to cut it down to five points," Watts said. "Things just started going downhill."

But that would be as close as Tulane would get. Rice successfully inbounded the rest of their possessions, and key free throws from Watts and senior guard Maudess Fulton closed out the win.

"Give Tulane credit," Williams said. "They did a good job scrambling on their defense and taking passing lanes away. Luckily, we had accumulated a big enough lead to hold them off, and we made a few free throws down the stretch to put the game away."

Rice is back in action on Friday against the University of Tulsa at Tudor Fieldhouse. They finished their home stretch against Southern Methodist University the following Sunday.

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