Season-ending heartbreak for USU
The Utah State women’s basketball team saw its season come to an end Thursday with a 77-69 loss to South Dakota in the first round of the Women’s Basketball Invitational. Junior Jennifer Schlott led the Aggies with 25 points, but it wasn’t enough to hold off the Coyotes down the stretch.
“It’s almost a carbon copy of half-a-dozen games this year,” USU head coach Jerry Finkbeiner said. “I wish there was a magical answer for that, but there was about six games this year that looked just like tonight. It’s kind of haunted us all year long.”
Led by senior Devyn Christensen, the Aggies jumped out to an early lead despite shooting struggles. USU shot just 31.6 percent from the field in the first half, but was a perfect 7-of-7 from the free throw line en route to an eight point halftime lead.
Utah State took its largest lead of the game at 32-22 on a layup from junior guard Jennifer Schlott with a minute to go before the half, but the double digit lead dwindled quickly as the Coyotes got hot from behind the arc, led by Nicole Seekamp.
Seekamp scored 26 of her game-high 33 points in the second half and South Dakota shot a blistering 65.4 percent from the field to take the lead with a little less than eight minutes remaining and pulled away down the stretch.
“Defensively we just let them do whatever they wanted,” Schlott said. “They fast-breaked on us, they got wide open 3’s – we were just out of sync tonight defensively. Offensively they were playing really tight on our shooters so I had open lanes.”
USU was outrebounded 50-44 on the night and shot 35.6 percent from the field overall. Schlott had a team-high 25 points, Christensen added 16 and senior Jenna Johnson finished with eight points and 13 rebounds while playing with a fractured finger.
The Aggies finished the season 18-14 overall and finished second in the WAC at 14-4 in their final season as a member of the conference.
“The growth of this program is out there,” Finkbeiner said. “The Mountain West is just going to compound the growth. There’s going to be opportunities for recruiting we haven’t had before, exposure we haven’t had before.”
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Twitter: @CurtisLundstrom