Taylor & Co. dominate Prairie View to extend winning streak to nine

Joni Taylor’s squad made the nice list.

Prairie View A&M did not.

In front of a festive holiday hoops crowd, Texas A&M (11-1) won its ninth straight game and left a lump of coal in the Panthers’ stocking, 88-36.

“Let’s celebrate Christmas and have an ugly Christmas sweater day, or a tacky Christmas sweater day, whatever you want to call it,” A&M head coach Joni Taylor said. “We’ve turned it into a little bit of a competition.”

Today, there was more competition among the staff’s sweaters than on the court.

“(Associate head coach) Chelsea Newton hands down had the best sweater this year,” Taylor said. “I thought the pink would help me out, but they said my sweater wasn’t tacky enough.”

The sweaters warmed up the Aggies’ start.

Zoe Kelton, TexAgs

The Aggies have outscored their opponents by an average of 34.6 points during the nine-game streak.

Once again, Lauren Ware paced A&M’s offense early with seven first-quarter points on her way to 14 points and eight rebounds.

“I think we were taking good shots. I don’t think we forced anything,” Ware said. “We had 14 assists. I think that was the most we’ve ever had at halftime. That just shows that we were sharing the ball really well.”

A&M started to pull away in the second quarter, holding Prairie View without a made field goal for over six minutes and forcing six turnovers during that span.

As the Panthers went cold, the Aggies got even hotter, ending the half on a 20-2 run while outscoring Prairie View 24-5 in the quarter.

Janiah Barker and Aicha Coulibaly each added nine points in the first half to lead A&M’s offense. Together, the duo outscored the Panthers 18-14 at halftime, but Coulibaly wasn’t finished.

The Auburn transfer picked up where she left off by scoring four of A&M’s first 10 points in the third quarter, helping the Aggies start the quarter on a 12-0 run in the blink of an eye.

A 32-2 run spanning the second and third quarters was too much for the Panthers to overcome.

“When we sub, there’s no let-up,” Taylor said. “That allows us to continue to put our foot on the gas.” 

The Aggie defense came into this game ranked inside the top 10 in the country in scoring defense, field goal percentage defense and rebounds per game.

In those categories, they showed out once again.

For the fourth time this season, the Maroon & White held their opponent under 40 points. The ferocious and feisty defense forced 17 steals and 27 Panther turnovers.

“We were pretty disciplined in what we do,” Taylor said. “We wanted to take them out of their offense. (We) forced them to play further out than they wanted to.”

Ware took over in the fourth quarter, scoring seven points in the first five minutes to put the game on ice.

The Aggies skated to an easy victory and gave the Panthers a 52-point loss just before the holidays.

“Most of us are going home to spend time with family,” Ware said. “We have conference play coming up, so we’re still going to be putting in work, but I think this will be a good break for us to reset before we get into SEC play.”

The Aggies have some much-needed rest before their final non-conference game against Texas A&M-Commerce on Dec. 31 at Reed Arena.