It was clear from the first nine shots.<\/p>\n
The No. 1 seed Texas women\u2019s basketball team simply couldn\u2019t miss. The Longhorns carved through No. 2 seed Michigan\u2019s defense, scoring on downhill drives, from midrange, pullup and in transition.<\/p>\n
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Texas made its first nine shots, while its defense limited the Wolverines to only one of their first nine. While the shooting spree tapered off for the Longhorns, the trend generally remained the same.<\/p>\n
Michigan couldn\u2019t find the bottom of the net all night, shooting just 22.8 percent from the floor, while Texas shot a blistering 46.9. The Wolverines\u2019 (28-7) cold spell never ended, and the Longhorns (35-3) held Michigan to its season-low scoring output in the loss, 77-41.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a better team than we looked tonight,\u201d head coach Kim Barnes Arico said. \u201cWe had a bunch of shots go in and out. We had it cut in the third quarter. I thought we were going to be able to make a run. They just put us away. They\u2019re really, really, really talented.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the get-go, the Wolverines seemed outmatched. Texas ramped up the physicality to a new level, challenging Michigan in the rebounding battle and in the paint. The Longhorns ran the Wolverines off the 3-point line and right into brick walls in the paint. Even though Michigan collected four offensive rebounds off paint misses affected by Texas\u2019 length, those translated into just two points.<\/p>\n
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Meanwhile, the Longhorns executed their gameplan at will. Offensively and defensively, Texas made the Wolverines play the Longhorns\u2019 game. Texas guard Rori Harmon directed the defense, which captured 11 steals and forced 15 turnovers. Michigan\u2019s scorer, sophomore guard Olivia Olson, didn\u2019t score in the first half and finished eight points below her season average.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think when you\u2019re playing against the physicality and the length, you know, we\u2019re a great shooting team, and this is probably one of our rougher games,\u201d senior guard Brooke Quarles Daniels said. \u201cI think, you know, when you are shooting shots that you normally make at a 60 or 70 percent level and they\u2019re not falling and then they\u2019re coming down on the end with easy transition points, sometimes it\u2019s hard to keep your head straight when they go on those runs like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Longhorns punched early and often, and Michigan shot one of its poorest performances of the season. The Wolverines could barely get to the line to break up the cold stretches, going 13-for-14 from the charity stripe compared to Texas\u2019 14-for-22. The brightest spot for Michigan, the second quarter in which the Wolverines limited the Longhorns to 12 points on 4-of-17 shooting, didn\u2019t even turn into an advantage as Michigan mirrored those 12 points on a similarly-poor 4-for-16 from the field. Olson and Swords were smothered off-ball, with screens barely affecting Texas\u2019 defense. When they drove with the ball, it just contributed to the dismal 8-for-27 shooting on layups overall.<\/p>\n
\u201cTexas smoked us in the rebounding battle,\u201d Barnes Arico said. \u201cThe 50\/50 balls, we pride ourselves on coming up with those. They were ripping them out of our hands. Then you take the experience of a fifth-year point guard and an All-American in Madison Booker, and, you know, it definitely wore us down. We were tired, and we\u2019re usually the team that\u2019s making other people tired. We couldn\u2019t initiate offense. They were in our face. Like, that was pressure that we haven\u2019t faced all year long. Then when we were able to break it, we couldn\u2019t get our shots to fall, so then we got tighter and tighter.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Shot after shot rimmed out or missed entirely as the Longhorns continued to pour it on. And Texas didn\u2019t even need the 3-point shot to establish a dominant 61-29 midway through the fourth quarter, having only made one to that point. With the game in hand, the Longhorns maintained their 30-point cushion, deflating Michigan one pullup or layup at a time, bolstered by 17 offensive rebounds and 15 second-chance points.<\/p>\n
The Wolverines concluded the game with five sophomores on the floor, a mark of their youth compared to Texas\u2019 veteran experience. Yet those five were also a reminder that while a disappointing finish, the Elite Eight is still just the beginning for this Michigan team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was clear from the first nine shots. The No. 1 seed Texas women\u2019s basketball team simply couldn\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[116,87444,795,27,29,537,28,28779],"class_list":{"0":"post-228021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-fort-worth","9":"tag-kim-barnes-arico","10":"tag-michigan-wolverines","11":"tag-texas","12":"tag-texas-headlines","13":"tag-texas-longhorns","14":"tag-texas-news","15":"tag-the-wolverines"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228021","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=228021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}