TYLER, Texas – For the third time this season, the Angelina Lady Roadrunners put a scare in the Blinn women's basketball team. But like the previous two contests, the 12th-ranked
Buccaneers found a way to win.
Blinn defeated Angelina 84-69 in its Region XIV Conference Tournament opener here at the University of Texas at Tyler on Wednesday.
"We survived and now we advance," Blinn (26-5) coach Jeff Jenkins said. "We didn't play our best and I thought Angelina played well, but we did what we had to do and got the win."
Next up for the Bucs, 11th-ranked Tyler Junior College at 3 p.m. Friday. The winner of that game advances to the tournament finals and earns a berth to the NJCAA Division I Women's Basketball National Championship.
The Bucs had to overcome a second-half run by Angelina to advance when the ball clearly wasn't bouncing their way.
The Lady Roadrunners took control of the offensive glass and cut Blinn's lead to six points, 63-54 with 5:33 to play, off second- and third-chance opportunities.
"We were getting killed on the boards," Jenkins said. "We don't have enough size in the post, so we had to rebound as a team."
Having 6-foot forward Shunta Nevitt, one of the team's better rebounders who was in foul trouble, didn't help, either.
Angelina went with a full-court press late in the second half, which disrupted Blinn's offense for a time, but the Bucs, behind the quickness of their guards, pushed through the press and fed the ball to their end of the court for easy buckets.
Blinn went on a 10-2 run that spanned nearly three minutes late in the second half.
With two minutes to play, the Bucs had seized control of the game once more.
Sophomore Fatima Adams scored 23 points, including a 12-for-16 showing from the free throw line, and pulled down 12 rebounds. Katrina Hayden scored 18 points, Nevitt scored 12 and Amari Jones and Alexus Freeman scored 10.
"All those girls played hard tonight," Jenkins said.
The Bucs split their head-to-head match-ups with Tyler during the regular season. Blinn won a shootout at the Blinn P.E. Building in January 106-102. The Lady Apaches took the latter contest 98-95 in Tyler.
"Tyler is a tough match-up for us," Jenkins said. "We can both score a lot of points, the key for us is getting more stops on defense."
