Tulane’s shooting frenzy led it a 74-56 victory against UH Saturday, the team’s third consecutive loss.
“That was an incredibly gut-wrenching disappointment,” said head women’s basketball coach Todd Buchanan. “The only thing that I know to do is own up to it and apologize, because that’s not Houston women’s basketball.”
Freshman guard Alecia Smith scored a game high 23 points, including 7-11 from downtown. Smith’s seven 3-point field goals were a career high.
Tulane got after it from the opening tip, as senior guard Janique Kautsky scored 10 points, including two back-to-back 3-pointers to put her team up 19-10 with 10:56 remaining in the first half.The Cougars sparked an 8-2 run after Smith hit a 3-point shot, cutting the score to 21-18 with 7:35 left.
This would be the closest the Cougars got to the Green Wave.
The second-half shooting for the Green Wave would continue to sizzle, as sophomore guard Danielle Blagg drilled four 3-pointers. The Green Wave had a 56-29 lead with 10:48 remaining—their largest of the game. Buchanan wasn’t pleased with his team’s defense, saying they were confused and lacked communication with each other as Tulane shot over 52.5 percent from the field, including 50 percent (10-20) from behind the arc.
“I feel like we played really soft and discombobulated. We didn’t do a good job of talking,” Buchanan said. “We didn’t do a good job of going foot-to-foot on the switches, and we didn’t do a good job of contesting the shots when we were there.”
UH just couldn’t get anything going on offense, as they only shot 33.3 percent; the same percentage accumulated for its last three games.
“It was the spacing on the floor, and we didn’t execute the game plan that we went over and drilled in practice,” said redshirt point guard Porsche Landry.
After a loss two days prior against Conference USA leading SMU, Landry said the disappointment carried over into this game.
“In a way it did, but you have to play every game one at a time. You have to have short-term memory,” Landry said. “The loss Thursday was tough. We were down 10 and came back. I guess that was the same mentality we had at the half today, but we didn’t execute.”