Miners come to life late in the game to beat the Aggies 57-52 and get the sweep this year

LAS CRUCES, New Mexico -- The Miners had won the last seven straight against the Aggies, including a 65-61 win over NMSU just a couple of weeks ago and the winning trend over their Battle of I-10 rivals continued Tuesday with a nail-biting 57-52 win.

“That was a heck of a college basketball game,” UTEP Head Coach Kevin Baker said. “That game was played the way it was supposed to be played, down to the wire and both teams back-and-forth. That’s what rivalry games are supposed to be like.”

"This is a tough one, I can't just sit here and lie to you, 7 games in single digits it's pretty tough," NMSU Head Coach Jody Adams said.

NMSU looked the more dominant of the two teams early, getting out to a 10 point lead (29-19) in the 2nd quarter off the back of Molly Kaiser going ham and scoring a season high 18 points on the night.

But the Miners hung around and managed to tie things up at 37 right before the end of the 3rd quarter.

Kaiser broke the deadlock to start the 4th quarter and give the Aggies a 39-37 lead, but from that point on the Miners would never trail again. They built a 9 point lead in the 4th, thanks to crucial buckets from Elina Arike who put up 16 on the night.

The Aggies had a chance to get back into it off a 3-pointer from Soufia Inoussa that cut the Miners lead to 2 but UTEP found a way to hold on for a 57-52 victory.

"We faced a lot of adversity early,” Baker said. "We just kept staring that in the face and fighting back. One of the great things about this game is that I really felt like when our team built the lead that the look they had in their eyes at timeouts showed me that we really weren’t going to relinquish the lead, and that’s a nice look for a coach to get. I’m very, very proud of our team. That’s eight in a row over a very good program, and that’s very, very difficult to do.”

Guard Avery Crouse has been part of all eight of those games and ends her Miner career undefeated against the Aggies.

“I know when I got here my freshman year it was a very big rivalry, and my teammates were very excited every time we played them," Crouse said. "It means something to me that we were able to be undefeated, at least in my time here.”

UTEP now move to 7-2 on the season, while the Aggies are 3-7.

The Miners hope to continue their winning ways as they now embark on conference play. Their first game is against La Tech on Sunday at 1 p.m. MT.

Meanwhile the Aggies take on Portland State on Saturday at 3 p.m. MT.