Women’s basketball drops season opener to Dixie State Friday
For most of the first half of Friday night’s basketball game, the Utah State women looked unbeatable. The Aggies led by as much as 17, and were dominating Dixie State in all aspects of the game. Basketball games don’t end at halftime, however, and Dixie stormed back in the second half to steal a win against the Aggies, 71-67.
“We just came out flat,” sophomore guard Devyn Christensen said. “At halftime we talked about coming out with more energy, but for whatever reason, we just came out flat and we gave them that reason to believe.”
Christensen’s second half, though, was anything but flat. Twelve of her career-high 13 points came after the break, with eight coming in the last 34 seconds as she tried to single-handedly bring her team back.
Christensen’s heroic effort fell short mainly due to the second-half play of Dixie State’s Sheila Adams. Adams shot a blistering 5-5 from the 3-point line in the second half to finish with a game-high 22 points, all of which came after halftime.
“She’s a good player,” USU head coach Raegan Pebley said of Adams. “But a lot of her shots came from open threes, and those were mistakes that we made defensively. It’s fixable and we’re going to fix it.”
Utah State started the game on fire. The Aggies jumped out to a huge 19-2 lead mainly due to a stingy defense that caused 17 first-half turnovers by Dixie State. With a little under four minutes to go in the half when the Aggies were up 25-11, the Red Storm started to make a push. Dixie went on a 12-5 run to end the half and only trailed by seven at halftime.
“I think we did a great job in the first half creating those turnovers,” Pebley said. “We want our defense to be great, but we also want to convert that into points for ourselves and that’s where we weren’t as polished.”
When the second half started, so did the problems for the Aggies. Dixie State opened the half with an 8-0 run to take their first lead of the game, a lead they kept for the rest of the night. The USU defense which held Dixie to only six points in the first 14 minutes of the game started to fall apart as Adams and Johnna Brown went to work. With Adams’ long-range barrage and Brown scooping up all the rebounds to finish with a big double-double of 15-18, the Red Storm started to push their lead.
“I think we got a little complacent defensively,” Pebley said. “Some quick threes helped them, free throws helped them, and then we didn’t convert offensively. We did not make our field goals the way we needed to.”
Utah State’s defense wasn’t their only problem in the second half though. Their biggest problem was their free-throw shooting. In the second half the Aggies shot 4-15 from the free throw line, and finished the night 9-22, a pitiful 40.9 percent.
“This game might have ended up differently if we had made our free throws,” Christensen said. “That’s unacceptable because that’s a lack of focus and that’s very unacceptable for us.”
Despite all the miscues, the Aggies, and Christensen in particular, hung tough and played hard down the stretch. Down by eight with 34 seconds to go, Christensen drilled back-to-back 3-pointers, scoring six points in seven seconds. Dixie then hit two free throws, only to have Christensen answer again. Dixie continued to hit free throws and managed to hang on to win.
When asked about her late-game surge, Christensen said, “That was just taking advantage of being overlooked. I haven’t been really aggressive to score yet this year, so they probably didn’t know that I’m primarily a 3-point shooter.”
Utah State looks to rebound from the loss tonight as they take on North Dakota State at 6 p.m. in Fargo, N.D.
“It’s about learning,” Pebley said. “We need to apply the lessons from this game to get better and get ready for our next opponent.”
– mark.israelsen@aggiemail.usu.edu