UTEP WBB Drops Second Straight on the Road at Marshall

The UTEP women's basketball team went 0-2 on their latest road swing as they fell at Marshall 76-66 on Saturday afternoon. With the loss, UTEP 13-11, 6-7 C-USA) has now dropped five of their last six contest, and have fallen to eighth overall in the conference standings with five games remaining.  Slow starts continue to plague this team as they fell behind to Marshall 15-9 following the opening quarter.

The Miners have not won a game this season when they've trailed after the first quarter.  UTEP played a much better second frame, and were only down 31-28 at the half, but played poorly in the third quarter en route to the loss.  The Miners shot 39.3 percent from the floor, won the boards (35-27) and took decent care of the ball (15 turnovers) only to have the Thundering Herd overcome that with hot shooting.

Marshall nailed 55.1 percent from the floor, including 11-24 (45.8 percent) from 3-point range. The Thundering Herd had entered the contest last in C-USA in field-goal percentage (.362), but managed to get going on all aspects Saturday. Ariona Gill played brilliantly once again as she tallied 21 points and eight boards. It was the sixth straight game that Gill tallied double-digit points.

Katia Gallegos added 12 points, five rebounds, five assists, and Katarina Zec contributed with 12 points, five boards. Avery Crouse pitched in with 7 points.  Following the game Coach Baker expressed his frustration by saying, “It was a very winnable game for us, but we just didn’t come out of the gates well. We missed nine lay-ups in the first quarter, and on the road that’s just too hard to overcome."

The Miners will attempt to rebound as they conclude a stretch of three straight road contests when they play at UTSA at 6 p.m. MT/7 p.m. CT on Thursday. You can listen to that game with Steve Kaplowitz on 600 ESPN El Paso.