Lady Panthers outplayed in season home opener

The three time defending SWAC tournament basketball champions Prairie View Lady Panthers lost their season-home opener against The Lady Owls of Rice Friday night 77-63.
 Despite the efforts of junior point guard Jeanette Jackson with a career high of 32 points, the Lady Panthers were unable to recover from the Owls first half-run.
 In addition, Dawn Brown debuted as the interim head coach for the Lady Panthers. Brown was under previous head coach Toyelle Wilson. During her three years with Wilson, she played a vital key role in the securing the Lady Panthers' three- consecutive SWAC tournament Championship.
 After the home opener, Brown commented over the performance of her players.
"Overall, I can say I'm honestly proud of them, I think that they fought extremely hard in sparks. The most important thing we're going to have to do is learn how to put 2 halfs of good basketball together."
 Coming back this season in addition to Jackson is returning junior forward Larissa Scott, who averaged 8.3 points, 7.2 rebounds, 1.3 blocks and steals per game last year. L. Scott was also voted ALL-SWAC first team preseason. L.Scott had 7 points, 9 rebounds and 2 assists.
 Jackson, who averaged 8.2 points, 2.9 assists and 1.5 steals per game last year, said,
"I did OK. I could have executed a little better, but overall I felt good about it."
"Team Defense. We have a lot of on-ball defense, but we need to work on Team Defense all together," Jackson added.
Coming off the bench against Rice was red-shirt sophomore guard Gabrielle Scott who scored 9 points and 5 steals. "Overall, I think 'JJ' [Jeanette Jackson] did a great job carrying her team, Gabrielle Scott did a great job coming off the bench," said head coach Brown after the game.
G.Scott also commented on her team performance that night. "As a team we need to work on execution and our defense is good but it could be better. I think that we need to learn how commit more to it, have each other's back and also know where people are on transition,".
Largely, Jackson, L .Scott, and G. Scott will all play an important roles in hopes to win SWAC again for a record fourth straight time.
"We're going to first put this game behind us, this is a learning experience, and I always teach the girls to play, practice, present," said Brown.
Brown said on the preparation for the next game against Texas A&M, "Texas A&M is a very skillful team. They're very experienced, a lot of returners coming back, so we're going to focus on us, and work on what we know how to do best-and that's playing Lady Panther basketball."
The Lady Panthers are set to take on the Aggies of Texas A&M in College Station on Wednesday Nov 13 at Reed Arena. They don't return to the Babydome until Jan. 4.