The holidays are a season for giving. And with its coaches clad in tacky Christmas sweaters, Texas A&M women’s basketball’s bench gave the Aggies plenty of points and boards as they rounded out non-conference play with a 96-54 drubbing of the Mississippi Valley State Devilettes on Thursday at Reed Arena.
“When you go into this last game before Christmas, you want your team focused,” A&M coach Joni Taylor said. “You want to leave this game feeling good about where you are, knowing that you’re going to have conference games after that. And you want to leave healthy. And I can check the box in all three of those areas.”
Junior forward Jada Malone led the way with 19 points and 13 rebounds for the Aggies, and graduate F Amirah Abdur-Rahim added 15 points and 10 rebounds of her own to give A&M a pair of double-doubles off the bench.
“Jada is like a big sister to me ever since I got here — even though she’s younger than me,” Abdur-Rahim said. “But when Jada gets going, it kind of helps me too. Because then I see her doing things, and then I’m like, ‘Okay, now let me get out there and do it too.’”
Abdur-Rahim has been finding her place with the Aggies after transferring from SMU and not being in Aggieland for the summer, Taylor said.
“She wasn’t here to learn our system,” Taylor said. “So she’s just growing into her own. And you can tell, she’s an aggressive rebounder. She can shoot it, she can drive it. She’s physical. And you can just tell she’s starting to feel comfortable with what we’re doing.”
96 points marked a season-high for A&M, a performance that came off 51% shooting from the field. Five Aggies finished the afternoon with double-digit scoring numbers.
“We spent a lot of time last week really getting healthy,” Taylor said. “And finally being healthy, and putting pieces on the floor and playing, and you could just tell that there was better flow and better continuity. And we also spent some of the time getting ourselves in better shape, and that’s the reflection of more points, too.”
The Devilettes also gifted the Aggies plenty of trips to the charity stripe, where A&M added 17 points off of 68% shooting from the free throw line.
Both teams were in a giving mood in terms of turnovers, combining for 25 on the day. MVSU was able to capitalize on A&M’s difficulties for 14 points off turnovers to the Aggies 15 — but a stellar defensive performance by the Maroon and White was able to hold the visitors to 28% shooting.
Next, A&M turns its attention to its Southeastern Conference opener against No. 18 Tennessee on Jan. 2. Malone says the physicality of the game — 56 of the Aggies’ points came in the paint — was a welcome challenge headed into conference play.
“I don’t know how it might have looked on TV, but it was really physical in there,” Malone said. “And that’s probably the closest to an SEC game that we’ve played all of our season. So with this being our last game before going into SEC, that’s really important.”
And as for the yearly tacky sweater contest that Taylor has made an annual staple of her holiday season, assistant coach Robert Mosley took the title.
“I don’t know where he got it from, but his sweater has our faces on it,” Taylor said. “ … I was just super impressed, number one that he came up with that, because that is not who he is. Yeah, he won.”
