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No. 10 Aggies Come From Behind to Down USC
COLLEGE
STATION, TEXAS (AP) — Sydney Carter made a 3-pointer with 10 seconds
left and No. 10 Texas A&M rallied past Southern California 71-70
Sunday, the 47th straight nonconference home win for the defending NCAA
champions. USC
(4-5) led 69-61 with 2:34 remaining before Texas A&M (8-2) took
over. Ashley Corral missed a 3-point attempt for the Trojans with four
seconds remaining. Trojans
guard Jacki Gemelos injured her left knee on a drive to the basket with
3:37 remaining in the first half. She fell underneath the basket and
writhed on the floor and sobbed in the hushed arena. Gemelos,
who entered the game averaging 11.6 points and a team-leading eight
rebounds, spent the second half on the bench with her leg heavily
wrapped. She will undergo further evaluation once the team returns to
Los Angeles. The senior was one of the nation's top recruits out of
Stockton, Calif., six years ago, but has been slowed by knee injuries
throughout her career. Adrienne Pratcher led the Aggies with a career-high 22 points. Corral had 16 for USC. Down
by eight points in the closing minutes, Texas A&M began its
comeback on a pair of jumpers by Pratcher that made it 69-65 with 1:37
left. She finished with nine assists and five steals. Tyra
White, who had 17 points for Texas A&M, made a free throw and
Carter had a layup with 24 seconds left that closed the deficit to
69-68. After Corral made one of two free throws with 19 seconds to go,
Carter hit from the right side of the key. The Aggies had shot only 2-for-8 on 3s before Carter's go-ahead basket. POSTGAME NOTES
TEAM NOTES
•
For the second time this season, Texas A&M used the starting lineup
of Adrienne Pratcher, Sydney Carter, Tyra White, Adaora Elonu and Karla
Gilbert… It marked the sixth start of Gilbert’s career, the 11th career
start for Pratcher, 64th for Carter, 81st for White and 84th for Elonu.
• Texas A&M moves to 1-2 in the all-time series against USC.
• Texas A&M is now 3-2 on national television this season.
• In addition to its 47-game streak, A&M has won 74 of its last 80 home games.
• The Aggies outscored USC in the paint 42-18, its second-largest margin this season.
•
A&M shot 50 percent in the second half to came back from a 10-point
deficit. The win marked A&M’s first come-from-behind victory since
stunning Stanford in the Women’s Final Four last April.
• A&M used a 14-3 run over the last 3:56 minutes and held USC without a field goal in that stretch to earn the victory.
INDIVIDUAL NOTES
• Pratcher ‘s nine assists, five steals, five rebounds, nine field goals and 35 minutes played were all career bests.
• White has now started in 68 straight games, a streak that started on Jan. 4, 2010 against Lamar.
• White grabbed a season-high eight rebounds and made a season-high eight field goals.
• White has scored double figures in 17 of her last 18 games.
• With 11 points against USC, Elonu has scored double figures in 8 of 10 games this season.
• Carter added 11 points for the Aggies.
POSTGAME QUOTES
A&M HEAD COACH GARY BLAIR
Opening Statement
We
needed a game like that. We’ve got a lot of things that are wrong with
our basketball team but effort and will to win are not one of them. We
had to make some adjustments. In the first half they were killing us on
the screen out front and shooting threes off it. We’ve just got to do
better – we work on it every day.
Ten points down, it did
not look good. We had everything in control early. Adaora (Elonu) got
into foul trouble and when she got into foul trouble that took away our
press. We couldn’t press with the bigs and we tried to play half-court
defense and they chewed us up.
I’m proud of my basketball
team for coming back, but there’s no way we would have been able to do
it without the crowd. They were up hollering. That’s when we came back.
On USC’s play
I
give USC a lot of credit. They played extremely well. They run their
sets extremely well, and they quit turning the ball over when they quit
trying to make a guard-to-guard pass. How you beat us is to keep the
ball in the hands of the point guard until the shot clock goes down and
wait for us to make the mistake, and we did. Ashley Corral just did a
tremendous job for them.
On the game-winning play
I had
to use one of my timeouts to set up the 3-point play, but we had no
idea they were going to miss one of those free throws. We still took
the three. There was a slip option off of that but we read it and as
tough of luck as Carter’s been having, it was very appropriate that she
hit that shot.
On Adrienne Pratcher’s play
Pratcher is the one that set the tempo for this whole ballgame. That’s the best game in here career that she’s ever played.
SENIOR GUARD SYDNEY CARTER
On her game-winner shot
(The
3-point play ) wasn’t set up. I was actually supposed to screen and I
just wasn’t in my spot. I told myself it’s about time I finally step up
and hit a shot for my team and just repay them for the hard work that
they’d been putting in the entire game. I think it’s a part of me
maturing as a senior and this team being able to handle adversity
throughout this whole game. I think I actually said a prayer when I
shot that last shot.
On the screen that was supposed to happen
Adrienne
(Pratcher) was going to come down and I was supposed to set a screen
for her at the top and then I was supposed to flare off and either take
it to the basket or shoot the shot if it was there. We got the shot we
were looking for but the play just wasn’t run how it was designed.
On what changed for the Aggies’ in the second half
Adrienne
and I just got in that huddle and said, “This is right now. We need to
do this right now. We don’t need to wait. We need stops and we need
people to step up and score with the basketball. First and foremost, we
need stops.” That’s what we take pride in as defense at this school and
I think we did a good job at the end of making sure that we weren’t
getting back-doored and that we were contesting every shot. We just
kind of stepped it up on the defense a little bit.
On giving up 3-pointers today
From
looking at the film, we know they were a good 3-point shooting team. I
think that’s a sign that this is a different team than last year. Last
year, we didn’t give up that many 3’s. It’s a growing and learning
process for us. We’ve got to realize that we have to get out on 3-point
shooting teams and I don’t think it really surprised us. That just
shows us how much work we’ve got to do on that end of the floor and
what we’ve got to get better at.
On the decision to shoot the 3 at the end
I
credit Coach Blair. Yesterday or two days ago in practice we were
running situation in practice. Adrienne passed me the ball on the same
play in practice and I knocked it down to tie the game in practice. I
just credit him for letting us work on that in practice and putting us
through real-life situations so that I’m able to step up in games like
this. I thank him for trusting me to shoot that shot, because he
actually told me to shoot it. I think if I had heard him say to drive
it, I probably would have done that. He trusted me, so I shot it.
On the seniors never having lost a non-conference game at home
That
definitely goes through our minds. I’m saying to myself that I’m not
going to let us lose this game. As seniors we really should take pride
in the fact that we’ve never lost a non-conference game here. We
embrace that and make sure that we do everything in our power to keep
that streak going, so next year Adrienne can say the same thing. I
think that’s the seniors looking after themselves and looking after
this team and making sure that we keep the trend going.
JUNIOR POINT GUARD ADRIENNE PRATCHER
On what was different about her game today
I
was being more aggressive on the offensive end as far as attacking and
shooting open shots and getting my teammates involved. I think once I
started getting my teammates involved early in the game, that kind of
opened up shots for me later in the game.
USC HEAD COACH MICHAEL COOPER
Opening statement
What
a basketball game. We came here, in a very, very tough arena and
against a very tough basketball team and came up four-or-five seconds
short of winning, but it was a very good game.
On what changed when USC was up by 10 with 4 minutes left
They
(A&M) started being more aggressive on the boards. I thought we did
a good job of battling them and fighting in the first half, but in the
second (half) when we got the 10-point lead, they got a couple of extra
free throws after they missed two. (Kelsey) Bone started flexing her
muscles down there and showed why she’s one of the top centers in the
country.
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