Welcome back to another edition of Stock Up, Stock Down, where we look around the state and talk about the good and bad things that happened.
This week's big news: the Horned Frogs beat the Aggies! We'll save talking about the A&M side of that for another time, but you can bet we're going to be discussing Lauren Heard!
Stock Up: TCU's big non-conference win
Just in case you skipped the title of this article and then skipped past the intro as well, I'm here to let you know that TCU beat Texas A&M.
And it wasn't, like, a close win. TCU scored more points in the second quarter than A&M scored in the entire first half. Lauren Heard had 33 points. Aja Holmes came off the bench to score 22. And the Horned Frogs defense forced 17 A&M turnovers.
TCU is a hard team to figure out. Heard is one of the best players in the Big 12. There are a lot of good pieces on this team. Raegan Pebley is a good coach. There are some nice young pieces like Paige Bradley and Evie Goetz.
But TCU isn't supposed to be beating the Aggies. And sure, you can blame some of that on A&M being too unbalanced. But Lauren Heard went full Lauren Heard at the best possible time, just dominating in the victory.
Stock Up: Sara Bershers
UTRGV's Sara Bershers was named the WAC Player of the Week. She averaged 25 points and 7.5 per game in win over Houston Baptist and UIW.
In my preseason preview for the magazine, I picked UTRGV to finish 11th in the WAC. And they still could, as the team sits at 3-5 on the year. But Bershers has helped the Vaqueros play a good South Florida team close, and now the team just beat two solid Southland teams in consecutive games.
Bershers was really good for UTRGV last season, but she's hit another level this season, and that's even factoring in that she's shooting 18.7 percent below average at the rim, per CBB Analytics.
(Also, Bershers is listed as a Sophomore by the team. We're 100 percent going to be revisiting her in a longer article sometime soon because she is good, has a few years left in the state, and also is very good.)
Stock Up: Tarleton
The Texans beat Oral Roberts on Monday, moving the Texans to 6-3.
Sure, just two of those wins are against Division I opponents, and I'm not going to sit here and pretend that isn't the case. But the Texans are looking at least a little ahead of schedule this season, with players like Malaya Kendrick and Jurnee President playing some nice basketball.
Plus, the team played Weber State pretty close in a loss on Saturday, plus the loss to Western Illinois was just by four points. Take the season-opening loss to Arkansas out of the picture and Tarleton has been competitive all season. The team has some winnable games against Northwestern State and UIW up next before WAC play starts.
Stock...Down?: SFA loses to Gonzaga
Losing to one of the best mid-major teams in the country shouldn't be viewed as the end of the world or anything, but I'm at least slightly concerned about the SFA offense against good teams.
The team scored a season-low 54 points on Sunday. The team shot 34.9 percent from the floor and was 5-for-22 from three. The Ladyjacks committed 17 fouls and had just seven assists to 11 turnovers.
Stephanie Visscher played well, scoring 18 points on 7-for-15 shooting with seven boards. But aside from Visscher, there wasn't a lot happening with the Ladyjacks. Zya Nugent was 0-for-5 from deep, Aiyana Johnson had just five points.
I'm not saying something is wrong with SFA — there's too much talent here, and I still think this team wins the WAC (and makes the tournament even if they don't, since Cal Baptist is ineligble for the postseason).
But the depth isn't quite where it was last year. The team is clearly missing Alyssa Mayfield and Marissa Banfield, and while I remain confident about this team, I do think it's not quite at the level where it was at last year. Yet.
(This was a WAC heavy week, wasn't it?)
