Roundup: Thursday, January 2nd
The women's basketball team falls in San Antonio; a former UAB tight end commits elsewhere.
AROUND THE SITE
Check out Sunday’s article about the Mars Bars game, one of the most bizarre incidents in UAB basketball history.
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Wednesday afternoon: Lost to UTSA 67-56 in San Antonio
The women’s basketball team suffered its second consecutive loss yesterday evening, falling on the road to AAC-leading UTSA. Although the Roadrunners’ final margin of victory was in the double-digits, the game was much closer than the score would indicate: UAB rallied from an early 13-point deficit, taking a fourth-quarter lead courtesy of a Molly Moffitt three-pointer. However, Randy Norton’s squad proceeded to score just two points during the stretch run, turning the ball over five times in the game’s final six minutes. The Blazers’ sudden stagnation cost them a shot at the upset.
Forward Rayne Tucker was magnificent, ripping down 6 rebounds and making 8 of her 11 field goal attempts; unfortunately, she was the Blazers’ only reliable source of offense for long stretches of the game. UAB players other than Tucker made 3 of their 12 three-point attempts and just 17 of their 48 two-point attempts, good for a 35.4% clip. The contest was kept close by similarly underwhelming Roadrunner shooting. This marks a reversal of the problem the Blazers faced during their Sunday loss to Temple, in which they scored at a respectable pace but couldn’t play defense.
Norton’s group drops to 9-5 on the season and 0-2 in conference play.
Despite their late-game struggles, UTSA coach Karen Aston complimented the Blazers in her postgame press conference, calling them the best offensive team the Roadrunners have faced since they played Stanford in December. According to Barttorvik, Stanford has the 11th-best offense in the country.
“I didn’t think this would be an easy game,” she said. “I think UAB is really good. They shoot the ball really well. They’re a tough guard, especially since we haven’t played a team like them since we played Stanford.”
Barttorvik ranks the Blazers the 167th-best team in the country and the third-worst team in the American, marking no change from earlier this week. The analytics repository still sees a massive imbalance between UAB’s offense, which it thinks highly of, and defense, which it thinks lowly of, despite the fact that those roles were somewhat reversed yesterday.
The women’s team now looks ahead to an easier week. They host Wichita State on Saturday and Memphis on Wednesday, both good teams but both below the caliber of Temple and UTSA.
FOOTBALL
Football recruiting news has been near-nonexistent over the last three days because of the NCAA dead period, which prohibits in-person recruiting contact and campus visits. Thankfully, news is about to pick up again: the “quiet period” began yesterday, allowing coaches to make in-person contact with potential mid-year transfer enrollees, while the dead period officially ends on January 5th. Starting tomorrow, UAB will host a significant number of prospects on campus over the next two weeks.
In other UAB football news:
Former UAB TE Dallas Payne, who had been in the transfer portal since December 3rd, committed to FIU on Tuesday.
Payne transferred to UAB from Northeast Mississippi CC in 2022. He appeared in 28 games during his three seasons in Birmingham, catching a total of 38 passes for 402 yards and a touchdown.
Payne’s departure, along with the departures of Bryce Damous and Terrell McDonald and the decommitment of Var’Keyes Gumms, leaves the UAB tight end room extremely shallow.
FIU transfer Antonio Ferguson looks to be the early favorite to start.
Jack Nickel, a former Michigan State transfer who caught one pass last season, remains in the transfer portal and still has the option to return to UAB.
Payne joins UAB quarterbacks coach Nick Coleman and UAB secondary coach Kenneth Gilstrap in heading to FIU (although the coaches’ departures have not yet been officially announced).