Welcome back to Stock Up, Stock Down, a look around the women's college basketball landscape in Texas.
We're a week into basketball action now, with a lot of interesting things happening around the state, like Baylor not looking quite like Baylor and Texas A&M winning with a new-look frontcourt.
Neither of those things show up on this week's list though. Instead, let's start where we'll probably start a lot this year: talking about SFA.
Stock Up: Stephen F. Austin
Last year, SFA suffered one of its only losses to Houston, dropping a thriller 61-59. Houston is expected to contend for a top spot in the American this year, so a rematch this season felt like a good way to take stock of how SFA looks.
And, well, they're good, y'all.
Stephanie Visscher only scored eight points and missed all three of her shots from deep, but SFA still rolled in the second half, winning 73-52. The Ladyjacks held the Cougars to 30.6 percent shooting, while SFA got 17 points from Aiyana Johnson.
The big thing with SFA though is the depth. Four players scored in double figures, and Zya Nugent wasn't one of those either. BriAnna Mitchell had 15, Aaliyah Johnson had 14, and Angel Scott had 11. It was just a well-rounded effort across the board from a team that is eventually going to start getting some AP poll consideration.
Stock Up: The Sun Belt
Two Texas-based Sun Belt teams faced Baylor during the first week of the season. Both lost.
But both teams also showed a lot of fight in those games, and while UTA faded in the second half, I left the weekend feeling really good about both team's chances to compete for a Sun Belt title.
Texas State lost by just seven to Baylor, then followed that up with an expected thumping of Huston Tillotson. Da'Nasia Hood is averaging 16.5 points per game and Kennedy Taylor is putting forth an argument for being the best pass-first point guard in the state.
Meanwhile, UT Arlington's result against Baylor doesn't look great on paper, but the Mavs were in that game during the first half, and it followed that up with a 72-54 win over a Sam Houston team that...well, that we don't really know anything about yet.
UTA seems to have found something in Starr Jacobs, who is averaging 20 points per game. The former Duncanville Pantherrette redshirt at Houston in 2018-19, then spent two years in JUCO at Temple College. She gives this team another dimension offensively.
Stock Up: Texas
Hey, Texas beat the defending champs!
That almost 100-point win over New Orleans was never really going to tell us much about the Horns and what the rotation would look like against a competitive team, but Sunday's win over Stanford sure did.
Kyndall Hunter, whose scoring outburst against New Orleans was written about last week, barely played, but her high school teammate Rori Harmon sure did, with Harmon making a huge early impression on the national stage.
Against Stanford, she scored 21 points on 8-for-16 shooting, plus added five rebounds. And from an eye-test perspective, she was just a joy to watch.
The bigger surprise from that game: Aliyah Matharu scoring 17 off the bench and just taking over the game late. The Mississippi State transfer has come to Austin and has immediately made a huge scoring impact.
Stock Down: San Antonio
It hasn't been a great start to the year for the state's two San Antonio programs.
UTSA's first year under Karen Aston wasn't going to result in a huge leap for the program, but it's lost big to two WAC schools so far, falling 77-50 to SFA and 72-53 to Abilene Christian.
Texas transfer Elyssa Coleman doesn't have the role that I was expecting, and it's been hard to find offensive production on this team. Jadyn Pimentel's defense has been a nice plus, though.
As for UIW, the Cardinals entered this year with a shot to compete for the Southland. Maybe they still will, since these non-conference games don't matter in that sense.
But the team was blown out in the opener against UTEP 81-47, then fell to New Mexico State 57-48. Compare that to last year, when the team only lost by four to UTEP.
Jaaucklyn Moore is the only Cardinals player averaging double-digit points, while some young players, promising players like Myra Bella and Brenna Perez aren't getting a lot of minutes yet.
