W. Basketball: Aggie women fall in season opener
Despite junior guard Danyelle Snelgro’s 15 points and five assists, the Utah State women’s basketball team fell to Portland 64-51 in the season-opener Friday evening at the Spectrum.
Junior center Lydia Whitehead had a game-high 15 rebounds and 12 points for the Aggies, while sophomore guard Alice Coddington added five points and six rebounds.
“We had some lapses defensively,” head coach Raegan Pebley said. “There were mental mistakes, not any type of a physical mistake, and those came especially in the first half.”
The Aggies struggled in the first half, committing 11 turnovers as the Pilots took a 29-20 lead into halftime.
USU came out a little stronger in the second half, led by 13 points and four assists from Snelgrove.
“She (Snelgrove) took care of the ball much better in the second half,” Pebley said. “She’s somebody that is a key player to what we do offensively.”
Despite shooting better from the floor and from the free-throw line in the second half, the Aggies couldn’t catch up, trailing the entire half en route to the 13-point victory for Portland.
Senior guard Ana Pares, who had 11 points in the first half, said the team has some things to work on in practice.
“We came out aggressive, we just weren’t there the whole game,” she said. “We had some lapses, and so that hurt us.”
Laiken Dollente led the Pilots with 18 points, while Tara Cronin came off the bench to score 11 points and record 10 rebounds.
USU’s 19 turnovers translated into 15 points for the Pilots, while the Aggies only scored two points off of Portland turnovers.
Pebley said the team usually gets between 15 and 20 points off of fast-break or secondary-break situations, but that didn’t happen in Friday’s game.
“We didn’t get much offense off of our defense tonight,” she said. “To score 51 points out of a set defense almost every time, that’s OK, but I don’t like that we didn’t get into our open court game.”
The Aggies also struggled with free throw shooting, hitting 38.5% of their foul shots compared to 81.3% for Portland.
“I’d definitely like to see the turnover number down, but when I see we’re 5-13 from the free-throw line and some of the defensive mistakes we made, it demonstrates that we had a lack of focus going into this game,” Pebley said. “The margin of error is very small for us and we need to be sharp every single possession, and that’s offensively and defensively.”
Pebley said she thinks the team was a little too weary of getting themselves overly pumped up for the season-opener, which caused them to come out a bit too relaxed.
“This is a great team with good character, and they wanna win,” she said. “I know it wasn’t a passive thing.”
The Aggies will be back in action on Wednesday at 7 p.m. against Northern Arizona.