WBB: A&M 83, Lamar 58

The road to defending the national championship began tonight in Reed Arena as the Lady Ags defeated Lamar. The game started slow on the offensive end as the Ags found themselves down by five after the first media timeout. But Gary Blair and company quickly turned things around and headed into the locker room at halftime with a 44-20 lead. The second half was more of the same as A&M held on to their lead and finished the game by getting some of their more inexperienced players some valuable minutes on the court.

Here are some quick thoughts about the women's basketball team's first victory of the season:

- The seniors are showing that they will lead the team as they set the tone in tonight's game. Carter, White and Elonu combined for 47 points, 13 rebounds and seven steals, not to forget their four assists to three turnovers. Carter is the most vocal player of the senior class, but they all lead by example. There isn't anything the underclassmen can say that the seniors aren't doing.

- Point guard play is going to be key in taking that next step to successfully defending the title. Pratcher was solid in the exhibition game and very good in tonight's match up. She scored six points to go along with nine assists and one turnover, while on the other hand, Standish played lights out in the exhibition and produced four turnovers to zero assists tonight against Lamar. I completely expect that at this point in the season from Lexi, as she is a freshman and she will go through her ups and downs while she adjusts to this level of competition. As long as the Ags can find a happy medium with playing time for both young ladies and they can each become more consistent, the Ags will be able to go a long way in the tournament.

- This year's squad has a lot of size they can put on the floor but Vic Schaefer is going to have to really implement his style of defense with the big girls. The young guards have shown a lot of improvement but Kelsey Bone is going to have to start buying in to the system that helped A&M win a national championship last year. She will also need to get more aggressive on the boards as she only snagged one rebound in her limited time on the court. It's not as if Bone can't do it, but she may need a little motivation at this point.

- Karla Gilbert came off the bench and played very well for the Ags. She scored 11 points, grabbed seven rebounds and had a block and a steal in 17 minutes of action. Her conditioning is improving and I'm sure it will continue to improve because she has a good work ethic and the coaches see a lot of potential in her abilities.

- I will say that while Lamar did score 58 points on Vic Schaefer's defense, you can't over look the fact that the Ags forced 28 turnovers, while Lamar only totaled eight assists. It was a fast paced game and Lamar scored 20 points in transition (which I'm sure the defense will hear about tomorrow). If you take away half of those transition points, you are looking at holding a run and gun type team to just 48 points. That in itself shows the effort that was given on defense in the first game of the season.

Throughout the beginning of this season, we are going to see the "Growing Pains" of these young contributors. Even with all the experience gained from last year's championship run, there is a core of young, talented players that have not logged a lot of minutes on the court at this level of play. And while they are working harder than almost every team in the country, practice time just can't match the actual game atmosphere. There are going to be a lot of ups and downs (hopefully more ups than downs) as the season continues to develop, but when conference rolls around, I would expect the team to start taking on their true identity and really start to figure out everyone's role on the team. You never want to peak too early or too late, but I picture this team starting to hit on all cylinders by the beginning of conference play.