Bobcats blow out Bowling Green to move to 2-0

In one of the biggest wins of the season up to this point, Texas State knocked off the Bowling Green Falcons, a 30 win team from a season ago, en route to a 74-48 win as part of the Sun Belt-Mid American Conference Challenge.

Despite playing just their second game together, graduate senior point guard Ja’Niah Henson, who scored 18 points in the victory, mentioned how the Bobcats desire to win and team chemistry helped push the team over the top.

“We all want it,” Henson said. “We all want to win and we have a desire to win. We are pretty close as a team as well.”

Graduate Student Timia Jefferson also talked about the team chemistry between her teammates while adding the fact the Bobcats feature players who all played at the highest level of college basketball.

“Going back to what Coach Z said, we have a lot of players with D1 experience,” Jefferson said. “We all know what it takes to get to where we want to be so we all have the same mindset that we want to win.”

With the Bobcats win over an established program in the MAC, Head Coach Zenarae Antoine talked about the significance of the victory with a team still getting use to being teammates with each other.

“What a huge win for our program,” Antoine said. “[Coach …] has been with Dawn Stanley for some time. He’s been to Penn State, [WNBA] so I have a lot of respect for him and his staff in what they do. They are coming off a win against a team that had 30 wins last year. …When you fail and come back together, that feeling and synergy was what we were looking forward to with our team. I’m not going to say we are at a place where we have arrived but we found a way to get it done today. I’m really proud of that and we found it in a lot of different ways today against an excellent team.”

On the keys to Texas State’s win was the Bobcats’ defensive play.

The Bobcats held the Falcons to under 12 points during the second, third and fourth periods while the offense caught up to speed in the second half.

Texas State also forced 27 turnovers which the Bobcats converted into 20 points.

“Our defense was really on today and our offense was OK,” Antoine said. “[Bowling Green] does some things that created some stress for us but at the end of the day our defense was on. To hold [Bowling Green] to under 50 points is awesome.”

As the Bobcats moved forward to their showdown with UT-Rio Grande Valley, Antoine talked about where the victory puts the program in their progression.

“It tells us exactly where we are,” Antoine said. “There is no more finding what we can or cannot do which will be fun to talk about and point to. It also gives the players a lot of confidence in their game.”

cmcwilliams@sanmarcosrecord.com Twitter: @ColtonBMc