COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Courtney Williams had a game-high 21 points Sunday to lead the No. 11 Texas A&M women’s basketball team to a 58-49 victory against Ole Miss in a Southeastern Conference game at Reed Arena.
In a game that featured six ties and eight lead changes, Williams moved 90 points away from becoming the 27th Aggie with 1,000 career points. She added eight rebounds to her total in her fourth 20-plus point game of the season.
Achiri Ade had 13 rebounds, giving her five-straight games with 10 or more rebounds, making her the first A&M player to have a rebounding streak of that nature that long since Kelsey Bone in 2012-13. Ade has averaged 10.4 rebounds since Dec. 9 Courtney Walker reached double figures with 12 points.
“It was just a hard ballgame,” Texas A&M coach Gary Blair said. “When you can win shooting 31 percent then you’ve done something right, so give our kids a little bit of credit. It started with three straight days of great practices”
Texas A&M (16-3, 4-1 SEC) posted its 13th-straight win at Reed Arena by rallying from a halftime deficit for the sixth time this season. Ole Miss (14-5, 4-2) took a 29-27 halftime lead despite two Texas A&M scores in the final 16 seconds of the first half.
Texas A&M used an 11-0 run midway through the second half to take a 49-41 lead with 7 minutes, 9 seconds to play. It didn’t relinquish that lead.
“We’ve been behind at half every ball game, five-straight games,” Blair said. “We found a way to win four of them. We found some things that would work. We talked about our turnovers that killed us. We gave up ten offensive boards in the first half. And we turned it over ten times. Now the difference is in the second half we had one turnover. One turnover, that’s good point guard play.”
Erika Sisk had 15 points to lead three Ole Miss players in double figures. Tia Faleru and Shequila Joseph added 11 and 10 points, respectively. Faleru led the way with 12 rebounds for her eighth double-double of the season.
“Texas A&M has a really good basketball team,” Ole Miss coach Matt Insell said. “They’ve got three of the most explosive guards in our league. They’re a tough match up night in and night out for every team that they play. I was proud of our kids for battling the way they battled. We missed a lot of open shots that we’ve been making, and we will go back and work on that. But we got every shot we wanted and I’m just really happy with are fight. But I’m not happy with being close. Our team is a growing team. We’re a young unexperienced basketball team that has a lot of youth on it. We are a young program in terms of our remolding process that we are doing with our program. Our next step is to go on the road and win a game like this or Kentucky. That you’re in there at the under four timeout and you just have to figure out a way to win it. We have to go back and work on that. Figure out where we messed up in that last four minutes. Figure that out as a program and get better from it.”
The second half was a close as any game Ole Miss has been in this season. It featured four ties, and neither team took more than a four-point lead until late in the half. With the game tied at 41, Texas A&M took a 48-41 lead — the largest of either team to that point with 8:27 remaining.
With the Aggies leading 54-46 with 3:30 left, Ole Miss scored to cut into the lead, but it couldn’t stop Williams, who had 14 of her 21 points in the second half.
Ole Miss had a great start to the game. Sisk scored the Rebels’ first four points and sliced through the defense early. Ole Miss forced the home team into four early turnovers, capitalizing to the tune of six early points, to take a 14-9 lead at the 12:34 mark of the first half.
Sisk set the tone, scoring 10 first half points and setting up the defense on the other end. Ole Miss held 16-10 advantage in the paint in the first stanza and a scored 11 points on Texas A&M miscues. Ole Miss forced Texas A&M into 10 first-half turnovers. The Aggies average only 15 turnovers per game.
With Ole Miss leading 19-16, Texas A&M used a 4-0 spurt to take its first lead, 20-19 at the 5:04 mark, but Sisk went coast-to-coast for a layup to keep give the lead back to the visitors before Joseph nailed the first triple for Ole Miss at the 5:20 mark. She scored the next eight points for the Rebels.
Ole Miss led 29-23 with 1:37 left in the half before four unanswered points by Texas A&M cut the deficit to 29-27 at halftime.
Ole Miss will play host to Mississippi State at 8 p.m. Thursday (SEC Network).
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