Weber dominates women hoopsters
For Utah State fans, the most exciting thing about Friday night’s women’s basketball 69-53 loss to Weber State was the half-time show.
Utah State came out in the first half shooting only 28 percent and quickly fell behind the Wildcats.
The Ags kept falling behind for most of the rest of the game, never getting closer than six and trailing by as much as 22 at one point.
“We needed to play the first half with the tempo that we played the second half,” Utah State Head Coach Raegan Pebley said. “The first half we were holding the ball letting them get their defense established. Their defense just outplayed us. We just weren’t aggressive.”
“I think we came out really timid at first,” USU’s Jessica Freeman said. “I think that made a big difference. The second half we came out a lot stronger. We weren’t playing together as a team at the beginning. We weren’t aggressive on offense.”
Freshman Taylor Richards led the way for the Aggies with 10 points. Kahlie Quinones and Brittany Hagen each added nine and eight points, respectively. Last season’s leading scorer, Ali Aird, tallied seven points.
Pebley said during the game the problem for the Aggies was their offense. She said she didn’t like the fact that her team gave up 69 points, but said offense was really the team’s weak point.
“When you’ve got a team that was playing defensively like they are,” she said, “you’ve got to nail those shots. We weren’t getting offensive rebounds so you’ve got to take the ones they are going to give you.”
Freeman said the problem for the team was nerves. It was the first game of the season, and since the Aggies knew Weber was going to be tough competition, they came out really nervous and timid.
She added that if the Aggies hadn’t been so nervous at the beginning of the game, it would have turned out much differently.
“If we would have stayed with them in the first half and came out and played like we did in the second half,” she said, “I think we would have been right with them and it would have been a really good game. But that first half was bad on our part.”
“Like coach says, ‘the first one to throw the punch wins,'” Quinones said. “It just seemed like we were letting them setting everything up on us. We needed to attack and that’s definitely not what we were doing.”
During the second half, Utah State came out much stronger and more aggressive on offense, but so did Weber. Down by 22 with just over four minutes to play, the Aggies, led by Taylor Richards, turned up their offense and brought it to 16 at the buzzer.
“I was proud of how our kids did not just rollover and stop playing,” Pebley said. “It could have been a 40-point blow out easily with the way we were playing in the first half. They showed what we want out of our kids, to keep playing hard.”
Quinones said that the loss helped the team learn what it needs to work on going into their seven-game road trip.
“[We] learned the dos and don’ts,” she said. “Do come out hard at the beginning of the game and don’t ever give up. No one likes to lose and we know what we need to work on.”
Utah State will face UVSC Tuesday night in Orem. It is the first of a seven game road trip. The Aggies’ next home game will be against Idaho State on Dec. 20.
-aedmunds@cc.usu.edu
Christina Zdenek, right,goes after a loose ball against Weber State´s Julie Gjertsen Friday night during the Aggies lose. (Photo by John Zsiray)