UTRGV junior forward Gage Loy goes up for a shot after catching a rebound. The Vaqueros’ next home game is Dec. 7 in the UTRGV Fieldhouse in Edinburg. SARAH CARVAJAL/THE RIDER
UTRGV Men’s Basketball dropped their home opener 72-94 to Texas A&M University—Corpus Christi and third in a row to start the season on Wednesday night.
The Vaqueros gave up their most points of the season against their rivals from the Coastal Bend. The Islanders shot 45.5 percent from the field and led for a majority of the action.
UTRGV had an exciting start out of the gates. Antonio Green hit three consecutive three-pointers. His explosion put the team up in the early moments of the game but that was the only time they were in front of TAMU-CC.
The game was plagued with fouls and foul troubles for both teams. A combined 59 fouls were committed and two players on each team fouled out.
Green, a sophomore, said the team’s fouling issues have been around.
“That’s a problem we’ve had since summer. I don’t know why we just have a problem with fouling,” Green said. “Try to keep your hands off, ’cause the way they’re officiating college basketball, you can’t do much touching. … Fouling is a part of basketball, some are going to happen. It shouldn’t happen near as much as we do.”
Turnovers were an even bigger problem for UTRGV throughout the game. The Vaqueros turned the ball over 26, 16 in the first half alone. The Islanders converted those turnovers into 34 points, compared to 24 points on the free-throw line.
There weren’t many smooth parts of the game. UTRGV rarely had a chance to set up its offense. They fell flat when they had to string together offensive runs and defensives stops.
Green was the soul of the offense the entire game, finishing with a career-high 26 points. He hit a trio of three points in the second half, as well, to try to close the gap. The Vaqueros trailed by 13 points. The lead stayed in double digits and TAMU-CC ended up extending the lead to 20 in the final minutes.
Nick Dixon was the only other scorer in double digits for the Vaqueros with 13 points. He did a good job of driving to the rim, getting to the free-throw line for 11 attempts. He said the disappointing game must serve as motivation.
“Well, we can look at these couple games and learn from it,” Dixon said. “That’s what we’re going to do, we got to learn from this experience so, hopefully, later in the season we can look back and improve on situations like this.”
