Winless women’s basketball fall in Los Angeles
The Utah State women’s basketball team made it three losses in three games after falling to Loyola Marymount on Saturday. The Aggies’ lost to the Lions 98-81 despite a career-best from senior Devyn Christensen.
“We have to make adjustments, we’ve been saying that for three games, its not a huge negative but there are some things that are common denominators in the three games that we have lost that we haven’t done on the floor,” said USU head coach Jerry Finkbeiner. “The biggest challenge will be finding practice time because we travel so much the first month of the season to make all of our changes.”
USU has fallen to 0-3 on the season while LMU is now 2-2. The Aggies were led by Christensen, who poured in a career-high 31 points to go along with seven rebounds. Sophomore Franny Vaaulu had 18 points and senior Jenna Johnson chipped in 12 points and a team-best nine boards.
“Devyn Christensen played extremely well, played 39 minutes.” Finkbeiner said. “I think Franny has had two good game games on the road, and Jenna Johnson. Those three are our leaders both emotionally and stat-wise for us.”
The Lions had three stellar performances from Alex Cowling, Mackenzie Keirns and Hazel Ramirez. Cowling had a team-high 24 points for LMU. Keirns had a double-double with 19 points and 13 rebounds. Ramirez had her own double-double with 15 points and 12 assists.
LMU took advantage of a slow start by USU, jumping out to an early 11-4 lead with four minutes played.
The Aggies fought back and took the lead 20-18 with just over 11 minutes remaining in the half. The Lions regained the lead a minute later and didn’t give it up for the remainder of the game.
Fourteen USU turnovers helped LMU take 37-27 lead with five minutes left in the first half.
The Aggies weren’t able to trim the Lions lead and went into halftime trailing 46-36. Christensen had 13 points in the first half to lead all scorers.
LMU continued its hot shooting into the second quarter and used a 21-10 run to push their lead to 21 points with 14 minutes remaining in the game. Offensive rebounding and turnovers led to easy scores for the Lions.
Christensen tried to keep USU in the game by scoring 18 points in the second half. The Aggies cut the lead to 77-67 with seven minutes remaining, but that’s as close as they would get as the Lions closed out the game.
USU finished the game shooting 45 percent from the field and 25 percent from beyond the arc. The Aggies were 24-28 from the free throw line but it wasn’t enough to give them the win.
“Our shooting was a little bit better but our 3-point shots were not good,” Finkbeiner said. “We were 0-8 in the second half.”
The Aggies next game will be Tuesday night at 8 p.m. in Anchorage, Alaska, where they take on Prairie View A&M in the Great Alaska Shootout.
“We are in it for the long haul,” Finkbeiner said. “I told the girls that it’s a long season.”
– jborba@aggiemail.usu.edu
Twitter: @JBorba15