The Vaquero women’s basketball team is now two games into Western Athletic Conference play. With those two games in the book they come away with two wins after defeating Utah Valley University 61-48 Saturday night.
Saturday they welcomed the Wolverines to Edinburg. Utah Valley fell in their WAC opener on the road to defending conference champions New Mexico State by only five points.
Bernesha Peters picked up tonight where she left off Thursday with the UTRGV’s first five points of the game. She finished with another career-high in points scoring 20 tonight, surpassing the mark she set just a game ago.
The freshman Peters has been a big part of the offense in recent games.
“I [am] in the gym day in and day out,” said Peters, the native of Spring, Texas “And it feels great to know I can out here and produce. And my mission is ‘as long as you work hard it’s gonna show’”
Saturday’s game played out vastly different than the Grand Canyon matchup. Baskets didn’t come as easily as in the rout Thursday. The first quarter ended with UTRGV only up 17-12, as opposed to 25-4 like two nights before.
“It open ours eyes, we thought ‘okay we’re not taking another team for granted, and we came out and played a stronger second half.’”
It looked like UTRGV would be allowed to pull away. The second quarter was their best of the game. Three point shooting and an offensive showcase from Shawnte’ Goff and Peters fueled a 19-10 second for the home team.
Utah Valley came out of halftime trying to climb back into the game. Trimming UTRGV’s lead down to 11 points. The response from the Vaqueros put the lead to 18 going into the final quarter.
The fight in the Wolverines was on display to the very end. The game was within nine points with under two minutes to play, with offensive rebounds keeping Utah Valley on the attack in the fourth. The rebounds did not translate enough points and UTRGV held on to win.
Goff lead the game in scoring with 23 points, she also collected 8 rebounds. Peters was not far behind her. Goff’s high scoring night came after scoring only 2 points a game ago.
According to Goff the team is able to pick each other up if an individual is not having a great night.
“We have great team chemistry, everybody’s rooting for each other,” The junior, and team’s leading scored said. “If someone is having an off night, everybody on the court and on the bench knows we have to pick it up. We definitely have a lot of role players and everyone does their role and I think that’s the key to success for winning.”
The first game of the two game weekend was a thorough victory over WAC members, Grand Canyon University. UTRGV won the Thursday meeting 52-28.
At halftime the Vaqueros held their guests to only 11 points through the first 20 minutes. Their opponents half time and full-game totals were close to the fewest points allowed in program history.
It was a different type of victory for the Vaqueros than Saturday’s runaway win, where scoring game from different sources
Bernesha Peters, a freshman guard, led the Vaqueros offensively with a career-high 19 points. Which only stood as a career-high for 48 hours before she improved in her next outing.
Junior Anushka Maldonado recorded a double-double with career-high 14 points to go along with 11 rebounds.
Home has treated UTRGV well, they now have a 6-0 home record. It’s onto the road now for the team as conference continues.
The Vaqueros will visit Chicago State and Kansas City next week to try to match the 4-0 conference start they had a year ago.
