STEPHENVILLE – The Sam Houston women's basketball team could not dig out of an early hole on Wednesday night in an 83-63 loss to Tarleton at Wisdom Gym.
The Kats (14-15, 9-9 WAC) fell behind 22-8 after a quarter of play and never got any closer than 14 points in the second half as the Texans (16-12, 8-8 WAC) never let up, holding SHSU to just 26.9 percent shooting for the game.
The loss closes out the regular season for the Kats, who will now await the completion of league play for the remainder of the teams to determine seeding for the upcoming WAC Tournament next week in Las Vegas, Nev.
Courtney Cleveland finished with a career-high 28 points and eight rebounds for Sam Houston, leading theh team in both categories, but did most of her damage at the foul line where she hit 16 of her 21 tries.
LeAndra Echi fell just shy of her season high with 13 points and seven boards, while
Madelyn Batista reached double figures in rebounds with 12 and eight points.
Meanwhile, Tarleton sported 11 players in the scoring column to finish off the sweep of the season series.
The Texans were on fire in the early going, holding the Kats without a field goal for the final 7:54 of the opening quarter as part of a 20-2 run that gave them a 22-8 advantage after 10 minutes of play.
They kept it up in the second half, hitting half of their shots from the field for the second straight quarter and dominating the paint to take a 45-26 lead into the locker room.
Sam Houston opened up the second half by scoring seven of the first nine points, to get within 47-33, but Tarleton responded with a 9-2 run to push the lead back out to a comfortable margin and did not let it that close again the rest of the way.
