Women play at TCU tonight at 7

[SCHOOPS]

WOW. Great win. I hope this a sign of good things to come. After the football season and the men's season so far we all need it.

[Tipoff96]

We sure do need some good news around here - watching the football and men's b-ball team this year has been depressing. Beating a team that beat Maryland (ranked #16) and California (ranked #9) is huge. Nice way to end the year. Happy New Year ponyfans!

[George S. Patton]

I'll offer some thoughts on Wednesday. I have some things I have to finish up tonight.

But quickly, the thing that impressed is how they didn't lose their nerve when they had the lead from about 11-10 to 72-70 and TCU took the lead on the 3-point play.

And Jillian Samuels -- the girl is ice. But she can thank our hustle to get the rebound after we missed the chippy.

Our fans were loud, into the game and made their fans look very passive.

Aint nothin' better than beating them in their building.

We flat out deserved that win. Nothing flukish about it.

[Peruna88]

It was a great win for our girls and the SMU fans were loud and rowdy!

The first half hero has to be Morgan Shell. She came in and really made a solid contribution both with good shots and tough defense.

After JB hit the 3 to put us back on top, they drove, missed and then just watched as we passed it around. There had to be 5-10 seconds (it seemed like forever) and they just gave up and let us run the clock out. Nice move by Haley Day to go ahead and hit the last deuce for the Ponies.

It was so nice walking out of that place with a smile. Great job, ladies!!

Come on out and support the Mustangs Saturday at 2:00 for the conference opener vs. Tulsa.

[PonyPride]

It's on TV? What channel is MNT? Going to be a tough game - TCU is hella good this year. We've gotta play well. Go Mustangs! (Notice I didn't say Lady Mustangs PonyPride )

Well done - I'm very proud of you.

By the way, missed you tonight, but George S. Patton took your slack barking at the refs about the Frogs camping out in the lane. Hard as it might be to believe, the man has some very loud pipes!

[PonyPride]

A lot to be proud of tonight, including:

* Jillian Samuels now has 151 three-pointers in her career at SMU (second in school history), but hit the first game-winning three of her career tonight.
* Morgan Shell had career highs in rebounds (4), field goals (4) and points (9).
* Christine Elliott got taken out of the game by the refs. Two of her fouls were legit, one was questionable and the other - her fourth - was an absolute joke. Alice Severin was sensational in her place, not so much on offense but tying her season high with 7 rebounds and playing unbelievably well on the defensive end. She was everywhere.
* Brittany Gilliam had 18 points. A nice number, but consider that SMU had a 10-point lead at halftime and BG had contributed just two points. She put the offense on her back in the second half with 16 points and came up big. But she played within the offense - tied her career high with 8 assists. Also tied a career high with 12 rebounds.
* Win number 319 and counting for head coach Rhonda Rompola.

Also want to echo what Patton and Peruna88 and the others said - the PonyFans were AWESOME. Filled up a section behind the SMU bench and for much of the game, they were louder than the Froggie fans (and with good reason) - even drowned the TCU fans out when they started some silly cheers. Major assist to all of the fans tonight - parents, folks who drove over from Dallas, etc. - you were fantastic.

[Peruna88]

Yeah, I would be remiss not to mention the fantastic job Alice did. She put in some serious minutes with Christine out and didn't pick up her 2nd foul until very late in the game. Very strong performance!

[Corso]

From SMUMustangs.com:

Gilliam, Samuels Shoot Mustangs Past TCU, 79-75
SMU hosts Tulsa in C-USA opener at 2 p.m. Saturday

Dec. 30, 2008

FORT WORTH, Texas (SMU) - Brittany Gilliam scored a team-high 18 points to lead three Mustangs in double figures, and Jillian Samuels drilled a three-pointer with 22 seconds left to lift the SMU women's basketball team to a dramatic 79-75 victory over TCU at Daniel-Meyer Coliseum Tuesday night in Fort Worth.

After allowing the Frogs to jump out to an 8-0 lead, the Mustangs reeled off a 29-11 run to take the lead they would throughout most of the game.

SMU took a 36-26 lead into halftime, despite getting just two points before the intermission from Gilliam, the team's leading scorer coming into the game. But the junior from Tyler, Texas, poured in 16 points in the second half, and Delisha Wills (13 points) got the key rebound before finding Samuels in the left corner who drilled her second three-pointer of the night to put the Ponies ahead to stay. Sophomore Haley Day (12 points) buried an 18-footer at the final buzzer to account for the final margin.

By beating the Frogs - who already had victories this season over two teams ranked among the top five in the nation - the Ponies (7-6) went over the .500 mark for the first time this season. The victory was SMU's second over TCU in as many years, and the Mustangs' 40th in the 53 meetings all-time between the schools.

SMU now begins the Conference USA portion of its schedule at 2 p.m. Saturday afternoon when the Mustangs host Tulsa at Moody Coliseum.

For a complete schedule and ticket information, log on to SMUMustangs.com or call 214-SMU-GAME.

[PonyPride]

Brittany Gilliam's double-double was her third of the season and second in her last three games.

[Tipoff96]

She almost had a triple-double too.

[BleedingRed+Blue]

Great turnout tonight by the PonyFans - they were really loud and supportive. Here's hoping this performance sparks a nice turnout at Moody Saturday - we can't have a hangover (from new year's eve or from this win) when we open conference play with Tulsa. Remember, they beat us twice last year.

Nice of Pride to bring up Alice Severin. I don't know if she scored at all in the first half, but to me, she was the glue that held us together when Elliott got forced to the bench with early fouls. She forced the Frogs to alter shots, she rebounded hard, she made excellent passes - she was like Dennis Rodman without ... everything else that is Dennis Rodman.

Morgan Shell was really good, too. She sure didn't look like a freshman playing in the biggest game of her career. Another sub who played with a lot of poise was Samantha Manesmith (sp) - she handled the ball well and got it to her teammates in position to score.

Nice job all around. Congratulations to Coach Rompola and the Ponies!

BEAT TULSA!

[The XtC]

Now that was worth the price of admission.

I dont have too much to add that hasnt already been said, but would like to point out a couple of things. First, our bench solidly outplayed TCU's, particularly Alice Severin, Elbie Gates, and Morgan Shell, as previously mentioned.

We outrebounded a much bigger TCU team, even with Christine Elliot missing most of the game in foul trouble.

TCU shot twice as many free throws as SMU (30-15), and at the end of the game it seemed like they were at the line on almost every possession. but Christine Elliot hit 2 shots that ended TCU's rally, and gave us the lead back, with under a minute to go. Elliott was one of our biggest free throw culprits at the beginning of the year, but she has made drastic improvement, and was 5/6 (80%) from the line tonight. Most importantly, the team kept their composure while the refs were trying to hand TCU the game, and made the shots they had to make to win at crunch time.

Besides being a win over our traditional rivals, this was big for several reasons, it's important for recruiting locally, it was on TV and gave us good exposure, and it's a good indication of how the team has been improving as the season progressed. TCU blew out UTA, the team we lost to in our opener, so this gives some measure of the progress made since then. TCU also blew out Houston, which currently has the highest RPI in C-USA (50th), so this should give the team some momentum and confidence heading into conference play.

Brittany Gilliam is currently the team's statistical leader in points, rebounds, assists, and steals.

As noted previously, we had a nice contingent of fans at the game, and our fans were loud enough to drown out the frog fans during one of their cheers. It's a pleasure getting to know the families and friends of our new players.

That's about all I can think of for now. Overall, a very nice win.

[CalallenStang]

Where are our resident Frog fans?

[mathman]

Where are our resident Frog fans?

That's what I was wondering. Corp usually can't wait to post the Froggie scores on our board. Must not be able to get out from under his rock.

[George S. Patton]

This could be the win that catapults our women into a strong CUSA season. The issue for them is going to be how they handle this. If we played TCU in November, we probably lose handily.

Now for the observations:
1. Sometimes we're a little overaggressive with our passes in the post. We gave TCU about 5 easy steals because we either were expecting somebody to be on the baseline or it wasn't a good decision.

On flipside, we got some great looks when we drove the baseline and found somebody on the weakside for the easy 2. We caught TCU in that spot about 6-7 times.

2. The maddening thing about Gilliam and Samuels is that they probably think their shooting range is longer than what it really and therefore, they hoist up some ugly misses. However, they believe in their shot and as poor as Jillian was from the floor, she never flinched on taking the game-winner.

3. Despite the foul trouble by Elliott -- the last 2 of her 4 were ridiculous as she's standing straight up and doesn't bump or lean (nice job by the officials to just assume the foul) -- I don't think we've seen 1/10 of what she can do. The key for her was that she was not intimidated by the TCU bigs when she was in there.

4. Really impressed with how far Haley Day has come. I would contend she's our best defender on the floor. Her spacing is pretty solid and she moves her feet well -- the key to playing defense.

5. Also liked what Morgan Shell gave us. But I think she's going to be one of those freshman who you have to be careful with because she looked winded when she came out in the first half.

6. We won this game because we're quicker than TCU. That's why we outrebounded and won the majority of the 50-50 balls including the one that Wills tracked down to set up Samuels for the winner. That half-step can mean so much.

I think TCU's problem is going to be when they face a quick team, their bigs are going to have problems because they don't move very well unless that Helen LONG LAST NAME is allowed to walk all over the floor like she did last night.

And I guess the officials have decided that 3 seconds in the lane is no longer in the rule book. What was that? I offered a tent to help them to help the TCU players camping out in the lane. I guess their other better player Eboni Mangum is coming off meniscus surgery so she was limited last night.

BTW, the last 20 seconds were weird. When Helen LONG LAST NAME fumbled it and we stole it in the lane, TCU looked completely lost and forgot that they had to foul us. I don't know if they thought it was tied or what. But then when they realized it, we spread the floor so well. That's why we killed the clock.

And as I said earlier, they held their composure in the last 2 minutes when the big lead disappeared and then they fell behind. That's called mental toughness. You either have that or you don't. I really thought with a 6-point lead (70-64) with 3:21 left, we were gassed. We looked really tired. But they hung in there.

Wish I could be there Saturday. Have a wedding to go to.

Beat Tulsa!

PS -- For those who didn't hear, La La missed the game. Apparently, she was in a car accident on Monday but appeared to be moving around OK. Hope we get her back for Tulsa.