Texas A&M's season ends with second-round loss to UCLA, 75-43

The 2016-2017 season came to an end for the Texas A&M women’s basketball team on Monday night as they fell to the fourth-seeded UCLA Bruins, 75-43, in the second round of the 2017 NCAA Tournament. The Bruins hit threes on their first three possessions of the game and consistently added to their lead over the course of the first half of play to take a command from the jump.

Khaalia Hillsman, Danni Williams and Curtyce Knox all posted 10 points to lead the Aggies in scoring in the loss.

Thanks to six first half three-pointers from Kari Korver and a poor shooting performance over the first 20 minutes from the Aggies, the Bruins were able to go on runs of 9-2 and 14-3 on their way to a 42-21 lead at the halftime break.

In the third quarter, A&M kept the Bruins from advancing their lead over the first half of the period, but another UCLA run pushed the lead out to 62-31 entering the final 10 minutes of play.

To keep their season alive, the Aggies would need to break the NCAA Tournament comeback record they set on Saturday night against Penn. However, that hole was just 21 points, and they weren't one of the top 15 teams in the country.

Instead of cutting into the lead, A&M allowed UCLA to push it to as many as 37 before coming to the 75-43 final score.

In total, the Aggies shot just 31 percent from the floor and just 14 percent from behind the arc, while the Bruins went 57 percent overall and 42 percent from distance. Additionally, A&M turned the ball over 14 times to UCLA’s nine.

With the loss, not only does the season come to a close, but so do the college careers of Knox, Taylor Cooper and Alyssa Michalke.

Cooper averaged over six points a game in her senior season, while Michalke, former Commander of the Corps of Cadets, was A&M head coach Gary Blair’s first ever walk-on to be named team captain. Knox finishes the year as the nation’s leader with 304 total assists, the most ever by any Texas A&M or SEC player in history.