COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Chennedy Carter and Kayla Wells had 20 points Sunday to lead the No. 24 Texas A&M women’s basketball team to a 73-71 victory against No. 15 Kentucky.
Wells made a pair of free throws with five minutes left to give the Aggies (16-4, 5-2 Southeastern Conference) a 10-point lead before Kentucky’s Maci Morris got hot. She made two 3-pointers and a pair of jump shots in a little more than two minutes cutting the deficit to 72-67. KeKe McKinney made a layup with 1 minute, 40 seconds left after Carter missed a 3-pointer, but Kentucky failed to score again from the field.
“Give Kentucky credit. This was a carbon copy of the Auburn game,” Texas A&M oachGary Blair said. “We got the big lead and let them back in the game. At the same time, with how hard both teams were playing, if we would have been down, I think we would have come back and had to make the decision at the end.
Kentucky (17-4, 4-3) got within 72-71 when Rhyne Howard made 2 of 3 free throws with nine seconds to go after Wells fouled her on a 3-point attempt. N’dea Jones made 1 of 2 for Texas A&M with eight seconds left before Howard missed an off-balance jumper with two seconds remaining.
Texas A&M sped to a 14-5 lead and wrapped up the first quarter with a 19-11 lead. Kentucky used the second quarter and got back in it outscoring the Aggies 20-14 and trailed 33-31 at halftime.
Morris led Kentucky with 22 points and Howard scored 21 as the two combined to make nine of Kentucky’s 11 3-pointers.
“Yu have to give Texas A&M all the credit,” Kentucky coach Matthew Mitchell said. “They really fought hard today and made the plays necessary to win. This was obviously such a close game, and they made on more play than we did. We got into some real difficult situations in the game, and I was proud of the fight our team showed, and gave ourselves the chance to win the game and possibly go into overtime. I am proud of our players.”
n No. 25 Missouri 74, Auburn 65: At Columbia, Missouri, Sophie Cunningham scored 30 points — 21 in the first half — and No. 25 Missouri blitzed Auburn early and made it hold up in a win on Sunday.
Cunningham scored 13 of Missouri’s first 18 points as it built an 18-0 lead. Cunningham made her first four shot attempts with three coming from behind the 3-point arc. Missouri (16-6, 5-3) didn’t score until Janiah McKay’s layup with 1:32 before the end of the first. Missouri led 23-2 at the end of one as Auburn shot 1 of 14 from the field. Missouri finished with a 17-5 rebounding advantage at the end of one.
Missouri led 43-23 at halftime and Cunningham was 6 of 9 from distance. Missouri made 11 of its 12 3s before intermission.
Auburn showed some fight late and narrowed the deficit to 69-61 on Daisa Alexander’s 3 with 89 seconds left capping a 14-3 run that started with Alexander’s 3 four minutes prior.
McKay led Auburn (15-5, 3-4) with 23 points.
n Tennessee 74, LSU 65: At Knoxville, Tennessee, the Tennessee women’s basketball team’s longest losing streak in nearly half a century is finally over.
Rennia Davis scored 24 points to break out of her personal slump Sunday as Tennessee defeated LSU to snap a six-game skid.
Tennessee (13-7, 2-5) hadn’t lost six straight games since 1970.
“There’s a time and place for everything,” Davis said. “I didn’t want to lose six games in a row, but maybe we needed that. Maybe we needed to see that we needed to get back to Tennessee basketball, we needed to play hard every possession, we needed to get defensive stops, we needed to make them turn over the ball.”
Davis was 8-for-15 from the floor and 8-for-8 from the free-throw line to match her highest scoring total of the season.
Although she is Tennessee’s second-leading scorer this season, Davis had shot a combined 8-for-43 from the floor in the four games leading up to this one. The 6-foot-2 sophomore had averaged 5.3 points during that stretch.
“I tried to come into this game with my mind cleared,” Davis said. “I put a lot of pressure on myself for the most part just because I know that this team needs me as we need everybody else. But this game, I just tried to just come in and just play and do what I’m capable of doing. I tried to use my size to my advantage on the smaller guards, shoot over the top and shots were just going in.”
Kasiyahna Kushkituah had a career-high 14 points, Jazmine Massengill scored 12 and Zaay Green added 10 for Tennessee (13-7, 2-5 SEC). Cheridene Green had eight points and 10 rebounds.
The Lady Vols won despite missing all 13 of their 3-point attempts.
Khayla Pointer scored 17 points and Mercedes Brooks had 13 for LSU. Ayana Mitchell added 12 points and 10 rebounds.
LSU (12-7, 3-4) committed 25 turnovers to lose for the third time in its last four games.
“I think our inability to take care of the ball gave them so many transition opportunities,” Pointer said. “When you give a team like Tennessee this many baskets in transition, you put yourself in a pretty deep hole.”
Tennessee took the lead for good less than three minutes into the game, though the margin was never larger than 11 points.
Massengill helped protect the lead by shooting 6 of 6 from the free-throw line over the final 1 ½ minutes. Before that stretch, the freshman guard had gone just 6 of 19 from the foul line this season.
“Down the stretch we got stops and down the stretch we made free throws,” Tennessee coach Holly Warlick said. “In the past some of the games we weren’t able to finish, we didn’t do those things. We stepped up and got it done. I’m really excited for this basketball team.”
n Alabama 58, Georgia 53: At Athens, Georgia, Junior Cierra Johnson had 14 of her game-high 18 points in the second half Sunday to lead the Crimson Tide (11-0, 3-5) past the Lady Bulldogs (13-8, 3-4) at Stegeman Coliseum.
The victory was the first for Alabama in Athens, Georgia, since 1997.
“It was a really gutsy win today in a tough environment,” Alabama coach Kristy Curry said. “I’m really proud of our kids today, their character was amazing. Today was a great confidence-builder for our team.”
The victory was the Crimson Tide’s fourth against the Bulldogs in program history. It snapped a 12-game road losing streak to the Lady Bulldogs.
Johnson had a career-highs eight rebounds and seven steals. Freshman De’Sha Benjamin had 11 points and six rebounds off the bench. Sophomore Jasmine Walker added in nine points.
Alabama led 30-21 at halftime and 44-35 entering the fourth quarter. The Crimson Tide extended the lead to 50-37 with 6:16 to go after senior Shaquera Wade completed the old-fashioned three-point play. Georgia responded with a 10-0 spurt to make it 50-47 before Benjamin knocked down a crucial mid-range jumper to put the Tide up by five with 3:39 left in the game. Johnson followed with a dagger 3-pointer as the shot clock buzzer sounded to push the lead to eight.
Georgia used a 6-0 run to trim the Alabama lead to 55-53 with 45 seconds to go. With time winding down, Wade pulled down an offensive rebound and gave the ball up to Johnson who was fouled with 12.5 seconds on the clock. Johnson hit 1 of 2 from the line to make it 56-53. After Georgia called a timeout, the Lady Bulldogs missed a 3-pointer as the Tide hit two more free throws to seal the win.
Senior Caliya Robinson had 13 points and 10 rebounds, while sophomore Maya Caldwell had a season-high 11 points for Georgia.
“The second quarter is what really sticks out to me,” Georgia coach Joni Taylor said. “We can’t give up 21 points in a quarter. A lot of those were in transition, and so we didn’t even have our defense set. That is where we got ourselves in a hole, and there is not a team in this league that you can give up 21 points to and expect to win a game. Credit to our ladies for fighting back, and to Alabama for running. They’re physical. They’re really good. The second quarter is what put us in the hole,” said Georgia head coach Joni Taylor.
Alabama will play host to No. 7 Mississippi State at noon Sunday (SEC Network) at Coleman Coliseum.
Georgia will take on Arkansas at 8 p.m. Thursday in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
n Arkansas 83, Florida 73: At Gainesville, Florida, Malica Monk and sophomore Chelsea Dungee combined for 50 points to help the Razorbacks (16-5, 5-2) erase a 15-point deficit and beat the Gators (5-15, 1-6) on Sunday.
Monk had a season-best 25 points, and Dungee matched that with her ninth game with 20 or more. Neither player scored in the first quarter.
Florida built a 19-7 lead after the first 10 minutes. Arkansas outscored Florida 30-16 in the second frame to lead at halftime.
Florida kept the game close for the early part of the third quarter until Monk got another layup for the 51-50 lead with 4:31 to play in the frame. Arkansas led by as many as nine points before finishing off the victory.
The win is the third of the week for Arkansas, which picked up a win at Tennessee on Monk’s last second shot Monday. Arkansas defeated Alabama on Thursday. The win moves Arkansas into a tie for third in the SEC standings.
Jailyn Mason was in double-figures for the seventh time this year with 12 points.
Funda Nakkasoglu led Florida with 20 points. She also had four assists. Danielle Rainey had 17 points and 11 rebounds.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 32 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.