Aggie women get first win of season at Weber State
The Utah State women’s basketball team finally had something to be thankful for during the holiday weekend. After a tough 84-52 loss to in-state rival BYU on Nov. 23, the Aggies kept fighting and on Saturday defeated Weber State 66-54 to notch their first win of the season.
“It was a great team win for us,” head coach Raegan Pebley said. “We had very balanced scoring, I thought our defense was very efficient, and it was great to win on the road and shoot well from the foul line. That game was definitely where things started to come together for us, and it was one of our first games where we had more productivity that we’re used to seeing in practice.”
The Aggies started their brief holiday road trip by heading to Provo to take on the BYU Cougars. In their opening game, USU struggled in all facets, shooting 30.3 percent from the field and scoring a season-low 52 points, while also allowing BYU to rack up 30 assists and 84 points.
“This is BYU’s best and most experienced team they’ve had in years,” Pebley said. “We knew it was going to be hard to contain their points, but we went in expecting ourselves to compete a lot better than we did. Our transition defense was not enough to slow them down.”
In that game, the Cougars came out on fire in the first half, hitting seven 3-point shots and outscoring the Aggies 49-22. USU’s center Banna Diop did her best to try to keep the Aggies in it as she led Utah State with 12 points for the game, but it was not nearly enough to counter BYU’s balanced attack, as they had six players score in double figures.
After the disappointing loss, Pebley said she remained confident that her team could turn it around. “We’ve got to be ready to continue to build our work ethic,” she said. “Starting 0-4 is not what anybody wanted to see out of this team so our next five games are all very important to our non-conference play and to our confidence. We need to stay confident offensively keep working to get better and have a high standard for ourselves to get better defensively.”
The Aggies must have taken their coaches’ words to heart, because just a few days after getting thumped by BYU on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball, Utah State came out and played like a completely different team.
The biggest difference in USU’s play was their defense. After allowing 84 points a few days earlier, the Aggies’ defense came out and stifled the Wildcats, holding them to 23 percent shooting from the floor and only 20 points in the first half. The Aggies finished the game only allowing 54 points, their season low, and also had 17 steals among forced 24 turnovers.
“We were much more successful slowing the game down against Weber State and that helped us to get our defense more set,” Pebley said when comparing the two defensive efforts. “BYU was just so aggressive and we weren’t able to slow the game down the way we wanted to. Our transition defense is also a huge emphasis in practice and that was another area that we saw carry over to the game.”
On the other side of the ball, the USU offense was also much improved. Outside shooting and free throws have been a big problem for the Aggies this year, but against Weber, Utah State shot over 70 percent from the charity stripe and also hit five 3-pointers.
“I think our offense has been really solid,” Pebley said. “We’re close to a 1-1 assist-to-turnover ratio, but we haven’t been shooting well from the 3-point line and that’s where our field goal percentage has dropped. We just did so much of a better job hitting outside shots.”
One of the reasons for the Aggies’ success comes from junior forward Ashlee Brown, a junior college transfer who is already making her impact felt. On Saturday she had her first career double-double and the first on the season for Utah State, scoring 10 points and pulling down 11 rebounds.
“Ashlee Brown is a very creative, strong, smart player,” Pebley said. “She’s definitely not reached her peak and there are a lot of areas that she still knows she can get better at, but our team has really enjoyed being able to feed off her inside presence.”
With a win under their belts, the Aggies return to the Spectrum Monday to take on Southern Utah University as they look for their first home win of the year.
– mark.israelsen@aggiemail.usu.edu