TCU women can't hold early lead, lose big to Texas Tech

By Travis L. Brown

Special to the Star-Telegram

Motivation from the TCU men's unthinkable victory over No. 5 Kansas on Wednesday was drawn for Saturday's women's basketball game at Daniel-Meyer Coliseum between TCU and Texas Tech.

It was, however, Texas Tech that utilized that motivation as a cautionary tale, with a 64-46 win over the Horned Frogs, who still search for their first Big 12 victory.

"We brought [the TCU men's win over Kansas] up in practice, how Kansas came in here and stubbed their toe and that's why you play the game, anything can happen," Texas Tech coach Kristy Curry said.

The game began with TCU (7-15, 0-11 Big 12) looking as if the school might pick up two conference wins in one week. The Horned Frogs jumped out to an 11-point lead with 7:51 left in the first half.

But Texas Tech guard Christine Hyde began her conquest of the boards, and TCU dug a hole it could not climb out of. Hyde, a 5-foot-10 native of Ontario, Canada, finished with a career-high 16 rebounds, five of which came on offense.

"She's just a relentless rebounder and she's just a relentless physical player that is undersized but just continues to make plays," TCU coach Jeff Mittie said. "Every team needs a player like her, and, really, Texas Tech has two or three players like her that do that."

That physical play is what Mittie said his team lacked. It manifested itself on the stat sheet in rebounds and second-chance points as TCU was outrebounded 42-35 and gave Texas Tech (18-6, 8-4 in Big 12) 18 second-chance points.

"What our team should have drawn from [the men's win over Kansas] is the guys played really tough and played really physical and they gave themselves an opportunity," Mittie said. "We didn't do that tonight."

Althought the Frogs did have offensive opportunities, they finished at a near season-low shooting clip, hitting 16.7 percent from 3-point range. TCU shot for a worse percentage from 3-point range only once this season, hitting just 15 percent against Baylor in the conference opener.

TCU could not recover from a 29-4 Tech run spanning over halftime.

Tech senior guard Casey Morris finished with a team-high 18 points with the help of four 3-pointers and was one of four Lady Raiders to finish with double-digit points.

TCU sophomore guard Natalie Ventress had a game-high 23 points in the loss.

Mittie used up all of his timeouts by the two-minute mark of the second half, attempting to draw a more physical game out of his players to no avail. He said it's the lack of those physical plays that has kept his team out of the Big 12 win column.

"Everytime you looked up they were getting five more attempts than we were and had 10 more free throws than we shot," Mittie said. "You're not going to win any game with those numbers and those are just effort, toughness plays. Obviously, we didn't respond very well."

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