21 Jan 2013
Sports Editor
Tim Cato / Senior Staff Writer
The Mean Green faced Florida Atlantic University on Saturday for the first time since the Owls ousted UNT from the Sun Belt Conference Tournament quarterfinals last season.
Despite the chance at payback, UNT fell 79-67.
The loss ended the Mean Green’s five-game win streak. Meanwhile, the FAU victory gave the team 11-straight home wins against conference opponents.
“When you don’t play very well on either end you’re going to get beat,” head coach Mike Petersen said. “We didn’t play well enough to win this game and we just made a lot of silly mistakes.”
After UNT (7-11, 6-3) took a 15-4 lead to start the game, the Owls (10-7, 7-2) came back and never relinquished the lead, going up by as much as 13 with 10 minutes left in the game.
FAU’s nine-point halftime lead could have been much worse were it not for freshman guard Loryn Goodwin, who scored 16 of her career-high 25 points in the first half.
In the second half, the Mean Green was able to get the lead down to four a few times, but could never complete the comeback.
“They stopped our run,” Goodwin said. “They made it to where we couldn’t push the ball as hard. The biggest thing is that we didn’t all play together and all do the best that we did in the first half.”
Although nine players received minutes, only five played more than 20 minutes. Junior guard Laura McCoy played the full 40 minutes, while Goodwin played 39.
“I thought we played hard,” Petersen said. “We did have a short bench tonight, but I’m going to play the people who are playing well. It’s not youth soccer. It’s not ‘get a juice box and ride home in the mini-van.’ You’re supposed to play well if you’re going to play.”
Freshman forward Alexis Hyder probably would have played more than her 34 minutes if not for foul trouble in the first half. She felt her increased workload factored into the poor performance.
“Not that that’s an excuse, but you can tell by how we started out that we didn’t start out with the same intensity we did in other games,” Hyder said.
UNT’s next game is against Sun Belt-leading Middle Tennessee on Thursday at 5 p.m. in the Super Pit.
