The Golden Hurricane women’s basketball team advanced through the first round of the American Athletic Conference tournament with a win against Houston, before falling against the No. 3 seed, Temple.
Tulsa dominated their first round matchup in the conference tournament. In the first quarter, the game appeared to be competitive, as only three points separated the teams.
However, Tulsa’s defense shut down the Cougars in the second quarter, allowing only six points. In the fourth quarter, the Golden Hurricane’s defense was even more dominant, as they only allowed three points.
Though they didn’t need to score much with the stellar defense they were playing, the offense was still flowing. Tulsa scored more points in the final two quarters then the first two, as they ended up doubling-up the Cougars, winning 76–38.
The second round brought a matchup against the Temple Owls. In the meeting between the two teams in the regular season, Tulsa struggled offensively, and the Owls won by 20.
Unfortunately, the script for this game was similar to the first one. Temple dictated the tempo of the game early on, and utilized a couple of large runs in the first half to take a large halftime lead, 36–19.
The third quarter was more tightly contested, but the Golden Hurricane weren’t able to pull any closer to the Owls, and went into the final quarter trailing by 20. They wouldn’t be able to make up that deficit, and Temple came away with a 78–52 victory to continue in the tournament. The loss ended the season for the Golden Hurricane.
Seniors Kelsee Grovey and Ashley Clark, after playing in their final game as a Golden Hurricane, spoke highly of the program after the game.
“We’ve had good experiences and hopefully helped change the face of the Tulsa program and made it a school people talk about,” said Clark.
“The reason I chose Tulsa was to change the culture of the team and I feel like we’ve done that the last four years. We are leaving the program in good hands and they will be fun to watch next season,” said Grovey.
Both Clark and Grovey sit in the top ten in school history of many statistics as their careers come to a close.
