North Texas lost in the quarterfinal round to Rice 61-43 and it was the slow, inevitable kind of game against a superior opponent that happens. Though the venue is a ‘home’ one, the crowd was light on green and had a good sprinkling of Rice fans.
The early start didn’t help, and the grinding game that NT succeeded with against Southern Miss got away from them late, as the Owl found easy buckets from their 6’9″ center Nancy Mulkey and star Erica Ogwumike.
North Texas got good contributions from Madi Townley and her smooth midrange jumper — she was 5/9 for 11 pints and 8 boards.
NT tried to attack the big center through Deja Terrell and Charlene Shepherd with some success. Ultimately, a friendly Rice whistle and lack of length combined to do them in.
Mulkey was able to get easy layups to kill runs or draw fouls to stop momentum. While NT forced her out of the post a couple times and into turnvoers — travelling violations — she did enough blocking of shots or bothering or challenging NT player drives to keep NT from scoring comfortably.
When she sat, NT could not take full advantage. Terriell Bradley, the senior scorer for NT, did nto have one of her typical games. She missed a layup after taking on the whole Rice squad and getting into the lane.
Her midrange game was short all night, perhaps on account of playing just yesterday. All told, a good portion of the performance can probably be attributed to the game yesterday. It was hard-fought, and there was only a short break.
Two straight years with at least one tournament win for Jalie Mitchell in the Frisco version of this tournament.
