Women blow it in Boise
By the end of the first half the Boise State Broncos had scored enough points to win the game, so there wasn’t pressure to score a lot in the second half of its 70-38 win over the Utah State women’s basketball team.
The Aggies managed to score 16 points in the first half, and by the time the teams went into the locker room Boise State led 44-16. The 44 first-half points would have won the game if the Broncos had never scored in the second half.
For nearly 10 minutes of the first half the Aggies didn’t score – allowing the Broncos to pull ahead as part of a 29-3 Boise State run. For those 10 minutes, Utah State was stuck on 10 points. The Aggies hit two 3-pointers in the final two minutes of the half to push their point total into the mid-teens.
For the game, the Aggies shot 26 percent from the field and 40 percent from the free throw line. The Broncos helped themselves to a big lead as they shot better from behind the 3-point arc at 40 percent than from inside the arc at 36 percent. Boise State led by as many as 39 points in the second half and the Ags were never closer than 28 after the break.
The Aggies had three assists to their 14 turnovers and were out-rebounded 54-29. The Broncos had 19 offensive rebounds that led to 23 second-chance points as opposed to the four Aggie second-chance points.
Taylor Richards and Jessica Freeman led Utah State in scoring with nine points. Freeman was 1-6 from the free-throw line. Ali Marchant had a poor shooting night going 2-11 but grabbed 11 rebounds while scoring five points.
Boise State’s Nadia Begay led the Broncos with 19 points and Jackie Lee added 11 points and nine rebounds. Five Broncos scored eight or more points while Jackie Thompson led the team with 10 rebounds.
Utah State made all four of its 3-pointers in the first half, accounting for 75 percent of their scoring in that half. USU didn’t make a free throw in the first half going 0-7 from the line and it didn’t make a 3-pointer in the second half going 0-6 from behind the line.
The loss is the women’s seventh in a row after their lone win of the season against Utah Valley State on Dec. 10. The loss also pushed Utah State’s record to 1-12 and 0-3 in conference games.
-krn@cc.usu.edu