Texas State got into Arlington at 2 a.m. Monday morning, tired but ready to fight.
The maroon and gold locked up the No. 10 seed in the Sun Belt tournament over the weekend, drawing a first-round matchup with No. 3 seed UT Arlington. It’s a team the Bobcats have beaten once before in a 72-55 victory on Feb. 1 at Strahan Arena. But it's also a team they’ve lost to more recently — a 69-49 drubbing in Arlington on Feb. 22.
Now, as the two Sun Belt schools from Texas collide again, head coach Zenarae Antoine believes her team well-equipped to take the season series.
“As we evaluate the two games and what what the differences were, I think the major difference to me was that UTA did a great job, when we came to their place, of rattling us. And that's on both ends of the floor,” Antoine said. “A lot of our young women are from this greater Dallas-Fort Worth area. So they were excited to have the opportunity to play in front of their friends and families and sometimes, you know, we started out with the nerves. It took a while for those nerves to calm down. I'm glad that we had the opportunity to play here now. They've played in front of a home crowd, if you will … And so now, we have a renewed sense for ‘OK, this is what we need to do in order to stay focused to start out the game.’”
Texas State has come a long way since dropping its first eight conference games. The team had to close its season out on a 6-4 run to even qualify for the tournament.
But now that the Bobcats are here, Antoine expects to see them play their best basketball of the season.
"How you start is important, but truly, it's how you finish. You know, it's the players that are in at the end of the game, it's the people that are able to finish on a high note, it's the legacy that you leave, that things may not go the way that you expect or want. And are you able to, you know, get knocked down and stand back up? And that's undisputed with this team with the way we finished the regular season Texas State and UTA tip off at 6 p.m. on Tuesday.
