COLLEGE STATION — When she was a freshman, Rori Harmon scored 18 points and distributed nine assists as the Texas women’s basketball team recorded a 76-60 win at Texas A&M on Dec. 5, 2021.
So Rori, do you remember much about that game?
“It has been a long time,” Texas’ senior point guard said Sunday.
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More than three years later, Harmon picked up where she left off in College Station during the first meeting between the Longhorns and Aggies since that 2021 game. Harmon’s 15 points and five assists led No. 7 Texas to a 70-50 victory in front of an announced crowd of 4,676 at Reed Arena.
Texas (22-2, 8-1) prepped for next week’s home games against No. 23 Vanderbilt and No. 2 South Carolina with its 20-point win. Harmon made seven of her nine shots. She opened the game with a jumper that beat the shot clock’s buzzer and later made another shot as time expired in the first quarter.
Harmon’s big game came just three days after she struggled through a 2-for-10 shooting performance against Missouri. She said she didn’t do much differently between the Missouri and A&M games since “I have a lot of free time because I have online classes only, so I’m constantly in the gym. I just think it’s more of a mindset more than anything physical, because I know I’m capable of doing better.”
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Harmon didn’t just beat the Aggies by herself. Forward Madison Booker had 17 points and 13 rebounds while Shay Holle and Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda respectively added 12 and 10 points.
“You have to kind of pick your poison. Like, who are you going to let score?” A&M forward Lauren Ware said. “Obviously they have a lot of good players on their team who can score the ball at will.”
In their second game since leading scorer Aicha Coulibaly was lost to a season-ending knee injury, the Aggies (10-11, 3-6) were led by the 12 points scored by both Jada Malone and Janae Kent. Ware scored 11 points and grabbed nine rebounds.
First-half gamble pays off for Texas
Aaliyah Moore missed her third straight game, and Texas coach Vic Schaefer said his senior forward could be sidelined “for awhile” as her battle with knee tendonitis continues. Mwenentanda made her third straight start in Moore’s place.
Mwenentanda was whistled for two fouls within the first 127 seconds and was immediately pulled from the game. But instead of sitting out an extended period of time, she returned with 3:26 left in the first quarter and played the rest of the first half.
When asked why he didn’t keep Mwenentanda on the bench with those foul troubles, Schaefer said having her on the floor allowed him to keep using his four-guard lineup and run some plays that he liked for Booker.
“I just needed Jak to come out and settle down and then go back in and just be a little bit different, and she was,” Schaefer said.
That gamble paid off. Mwenentanda scored six points and grabbed four rebounds after her short stint on the bench.
Holle gets her moment in the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry
Earlier in the week, Schaefer said that not too many of his players knew about the rivalry between the Longhorns and Aggies since the two schools had played only four times since A&M left the Big 12 in 2012. The one exception was Holle, a fifth-year guard who’s an Austin native and the daughter of a former UT football player.
On Sunday, Holle scored eight of her 12 points in the final quarter. She knocked down two 3-pointers as Texas expanded its lead and put the game out of reach.
This isn’t the first time that Holle has played well against one of Texas’ traditional rivals. Her career-high point total was the 22 points she scored last season against Oklahoma.
Texas limits turnovers during game against Texas A&M
In his postgame press conference, Schaefer expressed his displeasure with the way the Longhorns played in the second half as they outscored A&M by just a 32-29 margin. He also wasn’t pleased with his team’s aggressiveness since they shot only five free throws.
But Schaefer couldn’t complain about his team’s turnover totals. With a shorthanded A&M team forced to play zone, UT committed only seven turnovers, tying its season low that was first recorded against South Dakota State on Dec. 22. Texas had committed double-digit turnovers in each of its last six games. Against Missouri on Thursday, the Longhorns had 19.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas beats rival Texas A&M in SEC women’s basketball game
