EDINBURG — Freshman KaCee Kyle knocked down a career-high four 3-pointers to help lift the UTRGV Vaqueros over rival Texas A&M-Corpus Christi 52-43 as part of the South Texas Showdown on Tuesday at Bert Ogden Arena.
After a 1-5 start to the 2021-22 regular season, the Vaqueros (4-5) have found a rhythm as winners of three straight games. UTRGV also avenged a 66-57 loss Nov. 14 to the Islanders to split the season series.
“That was a grinder. We just really showed a lot of courage today, a lot of effort,” UTRGV head coach Lane Lord said. “It was a street fight today. It was physical and there weren’t a lot of easy baskets to come by, so I’m really proud of our group — that’s three in a row now.”
Kyle’s first-half barrage of 3-pointers sparked the Vaqueros to fight back from a first-quarter deficit and take a 26-22 lead into the locker room. The freshman point guard finished with a career-high 14 points, three steals and two assists.
“I think being a freshman and coming into a new environment, you just have to kind of find your rhythm. I think starting at (Kansas) I’m starting to slowly find my rhythm,” Kyle said. “I think I’m just feeling more confident with myself and not letting little things get to me.”
“She (Kyle) really has great tempo, pushes the basketball for us. She’s smart, she’s a winner, so we feel really good about her at the point,” Lord said.
UTRGV’s leading scorer on the year, Sara Bershers, didn’t put up her nightly average of 18-plus points, but she was a game-changer battling for boards and blocks in the paint. She finished with an 11-point, 12-rebound double-double and added three rejections.
“Tonight, my shot wasn’t falling very much, so you’ve got to find different ways to impact the game. We were down 18-8 in the first half rebounding at one point and that’s just not going to cut it, so I had to get down there and battle,” Bershers said. “It was a battle down there, but I feel like you have to do whatever you can to help the team.”
Next for UTRGV is the South Padre Island Classic, a four-team round-robin tournament at the South Padre Island Convention Center. The action begins at 3 p.m. Friday with Grand Canyon (5-3) taking on Liberty (9-1), followed by UTRGV squaring off against UTSA (2-6) at 6 p.m. Day 2, Saturday, will feature UTRGV against Liberty at 1 p.m. and Grand Canyon against UTSA at 4 p.m. The games can be streamed online at ESPN+.
