Chennedy Carter leads Aggies to 66-53 victory over Arkansas

Make it four straight and 23 total wins for the Aggie women’s basketball team as they defeated the Arkansas Razorbacks 66-53 Sunday evening at Reed Arena to close out the regular season. With a 23-6 record, Texas A&M (23-6, 12-4 SEC) posts its best regular season since 2010-11 while matching its third-best regular season in school history.

Texas A&M was on fire in the first half of the game, building up a 41-26 lead over Arkansas (17-13, 6-10 SEC) by halftime. Chennedy Carter scored 20 of her 24 points in the first 20 minutes alone and was instrumental in helping the Aggies shoot 55.6% from the field in the second period.

“We are supposed to be dominant,” said Texas A&M head coach Gary Blair. “We only had four turnovers in the first half, and we really played well.”

The Aggies used a 16-2 second quarter run to set themselves up for a dominant win, but a cold, low-scoring second half posed challenges for the sophomore-led team. Texas A&M shot 7-20 in the third period, and with 9:02 remaining in the fourth, Carter took a hard fall and ended up with a splint around her right pinky finger. Her teammates were left to put the game away, but in the end, they didn’t disappoint.

“Our goal was inside-first, outside-second,” said Coach Blair. “We could see the three-point shot wasn’t going, so we started going for more shots inside the paint.”

The new plan worked tremendously for the Aggies, as they went on to out-score Arkansas in the paint 38-12 while out-rebounding them 53-33.

Both N’dea Jones and Shambria Washington were catalysts in the Aggies’ domination from inside. Jones tallied 13 points and 16 rebounds, while Washington flirted with a triple-double, adding 8 points, 8 rebounds, and 9 assists. Chelsea Dungee was the Razorbacks’ leading scorer with 15 points.

“I thought they played like a team that is playing to host an NCAA Tournament games,” said Arkansas head coach Mike Neighbors. “For a team that has already locked in seed for the SEC tournament, you hope for a little bit of let down, but we didn’t get it.”

Texas A&M is the 3-seed in the upcoming SEC Tournament and has earned a bye to the Quarterfinals on March 8th. The Aggies will take on either 6-seed Auburn, 11-seed Alabama or 14-seed Vanderbilt on Friday evening. 

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