WBB: A&M dismantles Tide 70-49, wins 20+ for 10th straight season

Consistent.

That’s exactly what the Texas A&M women’s basketball program has been under head coach Gary Blair.

With a 70-49 victory over the Alabama Crimson Tide on Monday night at Reed Arena, the Aggies moved their record to 20-6 overall and 8-4 in conference play, and officially have recorded their 10th consecutive season with at least 20 wins.

“Another 20 win season speaks to the consistency of the program overall,” said A&M associate head coach Kelly Bond-White. “Consistency is the key word through everything; through recruiting, through development and through the standards we set in terms of building champions at Texas A&M.”

Courtney Walker led the Aggies, going 13-of-20 from the floor for a career high 27 points, while Courtney Williams added 13 more, Jordan Jones dished out 10 assists, and Khaalia Hillsman pulled down 10 rebounds.

Aided by a total of 22 Alabama turnovers, 13 of which came in the first half, the Aggies took a 12-10 lead with 10:35 remaining in the opening period and never looked back. Although the A&M effort seemed to drag during the contest’s first few minutes, the ample Crimson Tide giveaways allowed the Aggies to still take a double-digit, 31-19 lead to the locker room.

“Credit A&M and credit our inexperience,” said Alabama head coach Kristy Curry of the team’s turnovers. “A couple of times, we walked with no one within three feet of us.”

Alabama tightened it up some offensively in the second half, but it was to no avail as A&M’s hot shooting took over and allowed the Aggies to grow their lead to as many as 28 points late in the period. In total, A&M hit on 19-of-31 shots (61.3%) over the final 20 minutes, including an 8-of-12 performance from Walker over that stretch.

“I was just trying to find open spaces in the offense,” said Walker. “At the beginning they came off me a couple of times and I was able to find space and convert.”

Although picking up another important SEC victory was the team’s focal point of the evening, the Aggies’ ‘Big Three’ – Jones, Walker and Williams – each had a night for the record books.

In addition to Walker’s career high in points, the junior from Oklahoma moved past Toccara Williams and Morenike Atunrase into ninth place on A&M’s career points list with 1,325.

Williams’ 13 points were enough to make her the 27th member of the A&M career 1,000-point club, while  Jones’ 10 assists on the night gave her a total of 508 for her career and moved her past current A&M video coordinator and crowd favorite Sydney Colson into fourth on the A&M all-time career assists list.

“We don’t talk to the kids about it as much,” Bond-White said of the players closing in on records. “The coaching staff is well aware of where they are. It’s something they usually find out after the fact. They're truthful when they say they don't know.”

With three-fourths of the conference season now behind them, the Aggies turn their attention to the biggest game left on their schedule –  a Thursday night tussle with the 11th-ranked Kentucky Wildcats in Lexington.

With a victory, A&M stays on track to receive a coveted double-bye into the SEC Tournament quarterfinals and adds a résumé’ building win that could be the difference between hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament and going on the road for their first two games for the first time since 2011.

A loss on the other hand flips the coin on its head and makes it almost certain that the Aggies would be forced to play an extra game in the SEC Tournament and would also keep the overall résumé void of a true strong road victory in conference play, a mark that could keep A&M on the wrong side of the hosting bubble.

Win or lose, it’s clear that the game will have a major impact on the Aggies’ post-season seeding. If the team wants to get where they want to be, an average 20-win season isn’t going to be enough.

“We have set a much higher bar for ourself,” said Bond-White. “Are we satisfied? Are we happy? No. Sometimes it feels like we have 20 losses just because of the level of expectation we have for not just our players and coaches, but everyone involved in our program.”