OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — No. 7 Texas was too deep and West Virginia’s shooting too cold in the semifinals of the Big 12 women’s tournament.
Jatarie White’s 11 points and 12 rebounds helped the second-seeded Longhorns win 68-55 on Sunday, setting up a date with Baylor for the championship.
West Virginia (21-11) now faces an eight-day wait for the NCAA selection show. An RPI of 60 makes an at-large bid uncertain.
“I don’t know,” Mountaineers coach Mike Carey said. “We’ll see. I have no idea.”
Ariel Atkins, Joyner Holmes and Alecia Sutton each scored 10 points for the Longhorns (26-5), who have won 12 of their 13 games. They beat WVU for the third time this season.
“West Virginia is shorthanded, and you could probably tell that our bench was, I would say, the difference in the game because we had more fresh legs,” Texas coach Karon Aston said. “That’s what tournament play is about.”
Naomi Davenport scored 17 points and Kristina King added 12 for the Mountaineers, who were trying to repeat their surprising tournament title from last season.
But their 2-of-23 shooting from 3-point range spelled the end of the line.
“I just feel like it was an off day and we didn’t have legs,” Davenport said. “We kept hitting the front of the rim or the bottom of the net. We were gassed.”
All-Big 12 forward Teana Muldrow scored only six points, finishing 0-of-7 on 3s and shot 2-of-13 overall.
Carey thought his team’s poor shot selection factored heavily in the loss.
“We can’t stand out there and keep shooting 3s. We could have got a 3 anytime in the shot clock, but we were taking it early in the shot clock.”
West Virginia point guard Chania Ray added 10 points and eight assists.
“We tried to focus on defense and stop them from driving in the paint,” Ray said. “Unfortunately we took some bad shots which didn’t really help on the other end. We keep reiterating let our defense create our offense and it kind of showed that we didn’t really do that.”