Advertiser Staff
Another spectacular performance from Crystal Lee could not prevent Texas Christian from clinching the No. 1 seed at next week’s Western Athletic Conference Tournament.
Lee scored a career-high 32 points yesterday, but the Horned Frogs defeated the University of Hawai‘i Wahine, 73-67, before 3,403 at Daniel-Meyer Coliseum in Fort Worth, Texas.
The victory clinched at least a tie for the regular-season basketball championship — TCU’s first in its final WAC season.
The Wahine (20-6 overall, 11-4 WAC) can share the title if TCU (20-6, 12-2) loses its last two games and UH beats UTEP Thursday. The Horned Frogs would still get the top seed at the tournament, March 6-10 in Tulsa, by virtue of sweeping the season series.
"You would think 6-2 is a good road record, but 7-1 would be a lot better," UH coach Vince Goo said. "Today we really had a good shot at winning, but they made runs to go up big and we needed runs just to tie. After the last one, for about two minutes nobody scored. We started getting really fatigued at that point, and so did they."
The Wahine have chased TCU since losing, 72-66 in overtime, in the teams’ WAC opener two months ago. They were still chasing yesterday, falling behind in the opening minutes and finally catching TCU with a 16-3 surge midway through the second half.
Lee’s 3-pointer put Hawai‘i ahead, 52-51. It would be the Wahine’s last look at the top tournament seed.
Kati Safaritova, who burned the Wahine with 26 points in the teams’ first game, got her only basket of the second half to put TCU up, 54-52, with 8:44 to go. It was still a two-point game with 2:40 showing (60-58), but the Horned Frogs hit 11 of 12 foul shots in the final 2:10.
They never did stop Lee. The Wahine’s senior guard, who hit a career-high six 3-pointers to keep UH in the teams’ first meeting, drove TCU to distraction yesterday. Her points came from near ö 13-of-13 from the foul line ö and far ö 3-of-8 from outside the arc. On this trip ö Hawai‘i’s third in as many weeks ö Lee averaged 30 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists.
"She got some open looks early and then they didn’t do anything special to guard her," Goo said. "We got her to some open spots and she also penetrated and got fouled.
"She’s really confident in her scoring ability now and really determined. She saw the end (of her career) coming a while ago. She’s playing really hard."
But 19 turnovers and 36 percent shooting were too much for the Wahine to overcome. They held TCU to an even worse shooting percentage (35 percent), but could not contain Tricia Payne (23 points) or the Horned Frogs’ outside game. TCU hit six 3-pointers in the first half to take a 37-32 lead. The Horned Frogs finished with nine 3-pointers, and shot better from outside the arc (42 percent) than within (31 percent).
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