After a disappointing loss to Louisiana Tech, the Vandal women’s basketball team recovered with a solid 70-52 victory over Texas-Arlington Saturday night to stay in contention with the top teams in the conference.
Alyssa Charlston squares up to the basket and shoots over UTA’s Kelsey Willson during Saturday’s game in the Cowan Spectrum. The Vandals won 70-52 and will face Texas State at 4:30 p.m Thursday in San Marcos.
It was the first time Idaho (7-11, 4-3 WAC) has ever met UTA (3-14, 1-6 WAC) and the series started in Idaho’s favor. The Vandals will try to keep the conference wins coming when they travel to Texas State on Thursday and then Texas-San Antonio on Saturday.
Freshman Connie Ballestero said the team’s confidence is growing with every win.
“We know we can compete with anyone in our conference and we can beat anyone,” Ballestero said. “Anyone is beatable and we have a good shot at winning a lot of our games coming up.”
With the win Idaho stays in a tie for third in the conference, just behind Utah State. Seattle U. is still at the top of the standings at 7-0 in WAC play.
The Vandals went several possessions without knocking a shot down in the first half, but that soon changed. The Vandals caught fire and went on a 20-0 run to take a commanding lead, led by Ballestero’s 10 points. During that run the Vandals had eight straight points without a miss and held the Mavericks for almost 10 minutes without a field goal. UTA settled things down and cut the lead down a bit, but still went into the half down 34-21.
Idaho coach Jon Newlee said he liked the way his team performed overall.
“I loved our focus in the first half, “Newlee said. “Our shot selection was good, and Connie obviously ignited the fire for us in the first half, along with Alyssa (Charlston) from an offensive standpoint. Defensively, we were doing what we wanted to do, besides the fouls. Both efforts were good.”
Idaho started the second half on an 8-0 run to extend the lead, but UTA once again chipped away at Idaho’s lead and got within 10. The Vandals have had a problem with squandering leads all season, but this time the Vandals pushed back and finished strong.
Newlee said he was happy to see his team finish well, especially after giving up a big lead to La. Tech earlier in the week.
“We’ve got to get that monkey off our back, it’s something that’s plagued us this year,” Newlee said. “The lead got down to 10 and we talked about getting the ball inside and finishing some layups and continuing to get some pressure going defensively and keep our energy level up. You get in the mindset sometimes of ‘oh here we go again,’ and that has to change and I was glad to see it change tonight after just one day off.”
Junior Alyssa Charlston led all scorers with 20 points for Idaho, followed by Ballestero’s 13 points. Ballestero also added nine rebounds and five assists. Maren Austgulen made her first appearance in a few games and was solid off the bench with a career-high 11 points and two boards.
Kevin Bingaman can be reached at [email protected]