Joanne Allen-Taylor's Shooting Leads Texas past Princeton

Joanne Allen-Taylor scored 18 points as the No. 12 Texas Longhorns women’s basketball team defeated Princeton, 70-53, on Wednesday in their final non-conference road game.

Texas (9-1) was coming off a 74-58 neutral site win over San Diego on Sunday, the result of the cancellation of its highly-anticipated game with Arizona.

Allen-Taylor shot 7-of-10 from the floor, including making both 3-point attempts and both free-throw attempts. Texas had a 15-8 lead at the end of the first quarter and maintained that throughout the contest, though Princeton did go on a 10-2 run to start the third quarter to throw a bit of scare into the Longhorns.

Rori Harmon scored 15 points and had a team-leading seven rebounds and three steals, while Aliyah Matharu added 12 points. Texas finished shooting 51.9 percent from the field, but was outrebounded 21-4 on the offensive end, in part because Texas was short-handed in the frontcourt.

Texas announced before the game that forward DeYona Gaston would sit out with an illness. Gaston had played well in place of freshman Aaliyah Moore, who is out due to injury. Gaston had averaged 10 points and 4.9 rebounds per game in the past four games.

That opened the door for Latasha Lattimore, a freshman who signed with Texas in August after being released from her national letter-of-intent at Syracuse. She started in Gaston’s place and scored three points and grabbed five rebounds. She played just 19 minutes as a result of being in foul trouble.

Princeton suffered under the weight of a Texas defense that held it to under 30 percent shooting and created 21 turnovers. Despite that, Abby Meyers led the Tigers with 21 points.

The Longhorns are off for the next week before they host Alcorn State on Dec. 29 at 7 p.m. to end the non-conference slate. Big 12 play opens on Jan. 2 at Oklahoma State.

You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.

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