The No. 12 A&M women’s basketball team looks to extend its winning streak to five games on Thursday night in their regular season home finale versus Missouri.
Aggie head coach Gary Blair said that if he could pinpoint one facet of the game that has driven his team’s recent upswing, it’d be improved post play.
“My guards were not throwing the ball in the first part of the year,” Blair said. “Our kids couldn’t catch it. And who was getting the turnovers? Our guards. Now they’re throwing it in and the turnovers are not there as much and now they’re getting assists. They like assists, they don’t like turnovers. But I would say 50 percent of the turnovers that were early in the season were post-related hands, not the guard’s passes. Now we’re working better.”
Texas A&M (22-6, 10-4 SEC) appears to be peaking at the right part of the season, making the most of a recent four-game winning streak – which featured an 81-69 rout of then ranked No. 11 University of Kentucky in Lexington.
On Feb. 5, Missouri (15-12, 5-9 SEC) lost 55-48 to A&M in Columbia, Missouri. Blair believes the Tigers will face a new and improved Aggie squad.
“They’re going to pack it in,” Blair said. “They’re gonna pack it in and they want you to shoot those jump shots which generally we accommodate them. What I want to do is to now, we’re so much better at the post position than we were when we played up at Missouri, we want to make sure we have touches inside and outside.”
A&M junior guard Courtney Walker garnered SEC Women’s basketball Player of the Week honors- for the second time this season- for the role she has played in the latest winning streak. Walker shot 48.9 percent from the field and averaged 18.3 points per game in three of the four consecutive victories that took place last week.
Tip for Thursday night’s contest is slated for 7:00 p.m.