Abilene Christian
22-9,13-5WAC
UT Arlington
10-20,4-14WAC
Balanced Scoring Effort Against UTA Allows ACU to Secure Second Seed
3/7/2026 4:47:00 PM | Women's Basketball
ARLINGTON – In the last regular-season game of the 2025-2026 season, the Wildcat women's basketball team defeated the Mavericks from UT Arlington 72-57 Saturday afternoon.
Propelled by strong performances from the starting five, the Wildcats locked up the No. 2 seed in the Western Athletic Conference Tournament that will take place in Las Vegas on March 11-14. This is the program's highest finish in the WAC going into the tournament, and matches the highest win total since moving from the Southland.
Four out of five starters for ACU scored in double figures as Breanna Davis scored eight points before head coach Julie Goodenough cleared the bench with under a minute to go.
Emma Troxell and Erin Woodson both scored 13 points, and Natalia Chavez and Payton Hull followed close behind with 12 and 11, respectively. Both Hull and Troxell had near triple doubles with nine rebounds each.
The Wildcat defense was on display early in the game, scoring 18 points off of eight UTA turnovers in the first quarter. By the final buzzer, the Cats totaled 38 points off of 22 turnovers.
Riley Grohman scored a career high with nine points, all of which came in her first five minutes off the bench, when she went 3-of-3 from the 3-point line.
The Cats outscored the Mavericks in the first, second and fourth quarters and only fell by one point in the third.
Halfway through the second quarter, the Wildcats found their largest lead of the game, going up by 21, and although the lead shrunk after that point, it never fell to single-digits again.
In the second half, Hull was held to just one point as she went 0-for-5 from the field due to more intensity from the Maverick defense. However, because of the increase in attention paid to Hull, Chavez and Troxell were each able to help the scoring effort with nine points each in the second half.
The biggest threat to the Wildcats was UTA's bench, as the Maverick reserves scored 40 points, 28 of which came from Mila Reynolds and Kira Reynolds. Jadyn Atchison added 10 more off the bench.
UP NEXT
The Wildcats' first game in the WAC Tournament will be in the semifinals on Friday, March 13 at 4:30 p.m. CT. The team will have to wait to see who they play until the quarterfinal match ends the day before.
