USU women’s hoops comes up short
For the first time in 17 years, the Utah State women’s basketball team played a game Friday in front of thousands of cheering fans.
The Aggies lost to the Southern Utah Thunderbirds 79-60.
“I didn’t have any expectations for this game except for us to learn from it,” said Head Coach Raegan Pebley. “They just felt a lot of pressure. Overall, they came out and they handled it, and I think what happened is they psyched themselves up mentally to be ready for the game, and then when they realized, ‘hey, we can play with this team, we’re Division I talent, we’ve got the ability,’ they just kind of took too much of a breather.”
Christina Zdenek led USU in scoring with 16 points and Anne-Marie Torp added 12 for the Aggies. Brittany Hagen led both teams in rebounds with 10.
“I was really excited to play Division I ball and take it to this team,” Zdenek said. “I thought that was fun. Everybody was so in to it.”
Pebley was also pleased with her effort.
“Christina really showed that she’s wanting to step up and be a leader and score,” she said.
With SUU up by 14 points at halftime, the Thunderbirds opened the second half with a 27-8 run, giving them a 33-point advantage that would bury the Aggies.
USU would finish strong, however, outscoring SUU 23-9 over the last eight and half minutes. Torp scored 10 of her points in that run.
“I just told them at the end of the game, OK, now you’re playing for pride and how you end a game is how you’ll start the next one’,” Pebley said. “I really believe that.” The Aggies played strong early, keeping their score within two of the Thunderbirds for the first 10 minutes until SUU went on a 23-11 run to end the half. As a team, USU shot only 31.9 percent from the field as opposed to 45.5 percent for SUU. Every player for the Aggies saw time and all but three scored. “I thought it was important that we got everyone into this game, the first one,” Pebley said. “Because they’ve all worked really hard.” Pebley admitted that she also has some room for improvement as a coach. “I need to get better as a head coach,” she said. “There’s not a single coach in this country that can’t get better. I’ve got to get better.”
The game took place following the men’s basketball season opener and most of the 6,805 fans for that game stayed to watch the women play.
“I’m glad so many people stuck around after the men’s game and supported us,” Pebley said. “I can promise them that we are going to get better.”
Zdenek couldn’t believe how many people stayed to watch the game.
“That was great fan support,” she said. “I give everybody a ton of credit and I want to thank them for coming. It was awesome. I don’t know how many people were here but I’ve never played in front of that many people. It got me going. My old coach said that I’d get really nervous with that but it got me even more excited.”
-bhhinton@cc.usu.edu
USU guard Christina Zdenek takes a shot against Southern Utah´s Lacey Yates during Friday´s contest. Zdenek finished with 16 points for the Aggies. (Photo by John Zsiray)