#5 Lady Texans rout Howard 67-45 Monday

LEVELLAND — No. 5 South Plains had 10 players score Monday night en route to a 67-45 drumming of Howard College at the Texan Dome.

The Lady Texans improve to 6-1 on the season and 3-0 in the WJCAC and will be on the road Thursday in Snyder, taking on Western Texas College at 5:45 p.m.

"I don't think we played our best basketball but I thought we played well enough to win tonight," South Plains head coach Ara Baten said. "Credit to Howard, they got off to a tough start and fought back and I thought it was pretty even after the first six or seven minutes of the game."

South Plains jumped out to an 18-1 lead after one quarter as Howard shot just 25 percent in the front half with the Lady Texans forcing 13 turnovers before the break. Debora Reis scored six of her game-high 14 points in the first 20 minutes, scoring in double figures for the seventh consecutive game.

"We were spotty on defense," Baten said. "I thought at times it was really good but other times we got caught standing around a little bit. We got beat on some transition opportunities, and I may need to sub more so we can start keeping the defensive intensity higher. These are things I'm learning about our team and it's something I'll take a look at."

South Plains continued to pour it on in the second half shooting 45 percent from the field and knocked down seven 3s in the contest. Reis would add seven rebounds for the Lady Texans while Julia Stenberg and Serena Waters each netted nine points coming off the bench for South Plains.

"We have to take what the defense gives us and they were really collapsing on our players in the post," Baten said. "We did the right thing and pitched it back out and had a lot of good looks. We were sluggish in the first half offensively and the timing was off and we didn't get the looks we wanted. I thought we had timing issues early and it was better in the second half and we made some adjustments."

Sophomore Jordan Brown tallied seven points, five boards and a game-high five assists as South Plains forced 25 turnovers in the contest resulting in 27 points on the offensive end. The Lady Texans netted 34 points inside the paint and received 30 points from their bench.

Howard shot a 40 percent clip as Sumaiyah Abdur-Rahim led the Lady Hawks with nine points over 15 minutes. Howard would get eight points and three assists from Tatym Barnes while Mikayla Malik added six points over 22 minutes.