{"id":128964,"date":"2026-01-19T12:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T12:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/128964\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T12:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T12:19:08","slug":"aaliyah-crump-returns-to-texas-lineup-for-blowout-of-rival-texas-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/128964\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaliyah Crump returns to Texas lineup for blowout of rival Texas A&M"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the past eight weeks, Texas women’s basketball<\/a> player Aaliyah Crump has been thinking about a return instead of a redshirt.<\/p>\n

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The freshman guard scored a team-high 12 points in Sunday’s 80-35 win over Texas A&M at Moody Center. She had missed the Longhorns’ previous 15 games with a foot injury, but she played 21 minutes in her first action since Nov. 19.<\/p>\n

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“I took my time with my recovery process,” Crump said afterward. “I wanted to make sure I was my best self for this team when I got back.”<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/p>\n

Texas Longhorns guard Aaliyah Crump (23) pushes past Texas A&M guard Ny’Ceara Pryor (1) during the Lone Star Showdown at the Moody Center on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026 in Austin.<\/p>\n

Aaron E. Martinez\/Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n

A starter in her first five games this season, Crump came off the bench with 1 minute and 56 seconds left<\/a> in the first quarter. She missed her first shot in 60 days, but ended the opening frame with a steal. She got into the scorebook on a fast-break opportunity in the second quarter, and the 6-foot-1 Minnesota product later scored eight of her points in the final frame as Texas matched the largest margin of victory in the 89-game history of its rivalry with Texas A&M.<\/p>\n

NO. 4 TEXAS AT ARKANSAS<\/p>\n

When\/where:\u00a03 p.m. Sunday in Fayetteville, Ark.<\/p>\n

TV\/radio:\u00a0SEC Network; 1300 AM.<\/p>\n

Crump finished with six rebounds, four assists and no turnovers as No. 4 Texas improved to 19-2 on the season and 4-2 in SEC play.<\/p>\n

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“It was really good to see her out there and playing like she played today,” Texas coach\u00a0Vic Schaefer said. “Thought she played with a lot of juice, thought she played hard defensively.”<\/p>\n

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The No. 5 overall prospect in the 2025 recruiting cycle<\/a>, Crump did show some signs of rust. After making 30% of her 3-pointers at the beginning of the season, Crump missed all four of her deep attempts during an afternoon in which Texas finished with a 1-for-18 showing on 3-pointers with its lone make coming with 36 seconds left.<\/p>\n

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But with Crump back and the game’s result determined during a third quarter in which Texas outscored Texas A&M by a 23-3 margin, the Longhorns were able to give starters Rori Harmon, Jordan Lee and Madison Booker some rest. Those three guards had all been averaging 30 minutes in each of UT’s conference games, and Booker and Lee were playing more than 35 minutes. Booker (24 minutes), Lee (23) and Harmon (17) all exited the game in the third quarter and didn’t return.<\/p>\n

Schaefer also noted that UT can again start to use the four-guard lineup that it was favoring before Crump’s injury. Schaefer told reporters that the lineup that pairs Crump with Harmon, Lee, Booker and one of the team’s talented bigs is “problematic in certain matchups.”<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/p>\n

Texas Longhorns guard Aaliyah Crump (23) is blocked from shooting during the Lone Star Showdown against Texas A&M at the Moody Center on Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026 in Austin.<\/p>\n

Aaron E. Martinez\/Austin American-Statesman<\/p>\n

Texas didn’t consider a medical redshirt for Crump<\/p>\n

When Crump was initially injured, she was given a timeline of four to six weeks. Six weeks later, however, she was still being listed as “out” on the Longhorns’ pregame availability reports for their SEC contests.<\/p>\n

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MORE:See the Statesman’s best photos from the Texas-Texas A&M game<\/a><\/p>\n

That led to speculation that Crump may be angling for a medical redshirt, and Schaefer was even asked about that possibility in the leadup to the A&M game. The thought of a medical redshirt \u2014 usually awarded to a player who’s prevented by injury from playing in a certain percentage of their team’s games \u2014 is not a novel concept at Texas. Last season the Longhorns shut down senior guard Laila Phelia after just eight appearances so she could tend to an eye injury<\/a>. With her final season of eligibility preserved, Phelia later transferred and is now Syracuse’s leading scorer.<\/p>\n

Schaefer, however, said that Crump didn’t entertain the idea of a premature end to her first season of college basketball. For her part, Crump said that she wanted to get in on the action as Texas chases a national championship.<\/p>\n

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“I think it was just really special to watch the team on the sidelines for those 15 games that I was out,” Crump said. “It’s just something that I really wanted to be a part of. I just love playing with the team the first five games of the season, and I just want to win with them and succeed. It just really meant a lot to me to make sure I was back and ready for these upcoming 19 or 20 games, hopefully, that we have. I’m just really passionate about this team and our success, and so obviously I wanted to be a part of it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past eight weeks, Texas women’s basketball player Aaliyah Crump has been thinking about a return instead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[55422,48614,27,14539,29,537,5276,28,5279,13548],"class_list":["post-128964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-aaliyah-crump","tag-sec-women-s-basketball","tag-texas","tag-texas-a-m-aggies","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-longhorns","tag-texas-longhorns-women-s-basketball","tag-texas-news","tag-vic-schaefer","tag-women-s-college-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}