Undersized women Ags can’t keep up with Pacific
Valentine’s Day could have had a better ending for the Utah State women’s basketball team.
After a slow start by USU, and a definite size advantage held by Pacific, the Aggies suffered a disappointing 52-67 loss to the Tigers.
The loss sends Utah State to a 4-9 record in the Big West and 10-3 for UOP.
Not winning this game puts a damper on Utah State’s campaign for a bid in the Big West Conference Championship.
“Any road win is a huge win,” said Pacific Head Coach Craig Jackson. “It is a huge advantage to be one or two in the conference, and we have to win out to be one of those seeds. Any road win in the Big West Conference is a big win.”
Of the 10 teams in the conference, only eight get to compete in the tournament. USU is fighting for the eighth spot with UC Irvine and Cal State Northridge.
The Aggies’ first meeting with Pacific ended in about the same manner. Starting point guard Corinne Wong and starting forward Nancy Dinges for Pacific scored a combined 30 points to lead the Tigers for their first win over Utah State.
In their second meeting of the year, USU held Dinges to only three points and forced her to shoot 1-of-6 from the field. Wong scored 16 points in their win but that wasn’t the story of the game.
“It was very obvious that we came out flat, we just seemed too jittery like we had too much caffeine today or something,” said USU Head Coach Raegan Pebley.
Utah State did not score a field goal until almost four minutes in the game had passed. That was a lay-up by Jessica Freeman. Pacific got out to a big lead early and was unrelenting, keeping the Aggies from making a comeback.
With just over eight minutes left in the first half, the score was 21-8 in favor of Pacific. This score could be credited to the Tigers up-tempo style of moving the ball and the size advantage they had over USU in the post.
“You don’t win or lose in the first couple minutes of the game,” Pebley said. “We lost it in the paint. They got the ball inside whenever they wanted to and capitalized off it. They also got a ton of offensive rebounds.”
Utah State’s transition defense was lacking during the first 10 minutes of the game, and to counter that they started to press the ball in the back court. Starting off with a three-quarter court press then moving to a full-court press, this slowed down Pacific, making it easier to keep up with their run-and-gun style.
“The press that we put on was mainly to slow them down and to slow the clock down, we thought that helped in pressuring them to put a quick shot up,” said Aggie starting point guard Terrin Johnston.
Utah State also started to front the post, making the post passes harder to execute and creating easy double teams from the weak side on the bigger players for Pacific.
“If we didn’t front we were out of the game, seeing how their post players were a lot bigger than us and they were strong and so we really had to rely on weakside help to help you out with the lobs, and you have to take a chance on fronting because we didn’t want to risk them getting the ball. We didn’t do the best job of it but we tried,” said USU forward Jessica Freeman. “To be honest I don’t think we played very good defense inside tonight and that really hurt us.”
USU made a run at the lead at the end of the first half. Camille Brox scored a breakaway layup on the last play of the half, bringing them to only six points behind with a halftime score of 24-30.
But the Tigers held off the run and the second half was a lot of the same. UOP was able to get the ball inside and capitalize, keeping the Aggies out of the game.
Every time the Ags came up with a big play, the Tigers countered it the very next possession.
In one instance, Christina Zdenek scored a slashing layup and looked to give the Aggies a spark, the Tigers responded with an old-fashioned three-point play.
Stephanie Grant hit a three-pointer that could have started an Aggie run, but was countered by another three by Wong.
-kcaustin@cc.usu.edu