Instead, the Lady Crusaders had a coming out party.
Junior forward Kellie Thomas scored a career-high 19 points and UMHB executed almost flawlessly en route to an 83-63 victory over Texas-Tyler on Friday evening at Mayborn Campus Center.
The Lady Crusaders (5-4 overall, 4-1 American Southwest Conference) committed only seven turnovers, tallied 10 steals, shot 50 percent from the field and had five players in double figures - all without ASC West Division Preseason Player of the Year Landie Thompson, a sophomore post who was out with a strained calf muscle.
“With some of our key players out, this is huge for us,” said Thomas, who also had six blocked shots. “It shows other teams that we can do it and it shows us that we can do it.”
Also absent for UMHB were reserve junior guard Courtney Wolfe and junior forward Stacie Stephens, who might be out for the season with a knee injury.
The Lady Crusaders, however, never skipped a beat.
Stacie Urbina scored six of her 13 points during a 13-2 first-half run that included five points from Thomas and gave UMHB the lead for good.
The Patriots (7-4, 4-2) cut the deficit to six points early in the second half but that’s as close as they got. Despite getting second-chance opportunities thanks to 20 offensive rebounds, UT-Tyler shot only 39 percent from the floor.
“It hurt us on the boards not having Landie, but we shot the ball well and we got back on defense,” UMHB coach Kim Kirkpatrick-Thornton said. “We were converting in transition, but we didn’t want to push it every time and get into a running match with them.”
Jenny Black had 12 points for UMHB and Kallie White added a dozen and seven assists. Mallory McAdams chipped in 10 points.
Forward Becky Taylor had 18 points and 18 rebounds for the Patriots, who got 16 points from Lindsay Eaton and 10 from Lindsay Hausman.
UMHB, which travels Monday to face divisional foe Concordia Texas in Austin, remained one of three West teams with only one conference loss.
“This was probably as good as we’ve played on the both ends of the floor in a while,” Kirkpatrick-Thornton said.
edrennan@temple-telegram.com
