There are some games that teams want to forget about. Friday night's game is one that the ASU women's basketball team would like to not remember.
The No. 15 Sun Devils (20-5, 9-4 Pac-12) fell to the Stanford Cardinal 61-35 at Maples Pavilion.
ASU has now lost back-to-back games for the first time this season.
The Cardinal (23-2, 12-1 Pac-12) were led by senior forward Chiney Ogwumike, who scored 20 points on 10-12 shooting and pulled down 13 rebounds. Junior guard Amber Orrange scored 14 points and recorded five steals in the game.
ASU junior guard Promise Amukamara and freshman forward Sophie Brunner scored nine points each to pace the Sun Devils.
ASU did not shoot well in any category in the game. The team shot 24.2 percent from the field, 8.3 percent from behind the 3-point arc, and a mere 30.8 percent from the free-throw stripe.
Along with the poor shooting, coach Charli Turner Thorne recognized that her team did not execute its offensive gameplan.
"We didn't do anything we wanted to do offensively," Turner Thorne said. "Get in a flow, have some patience and we didn't do that."
The Cardinal were dominant from the start, not allowing the Sun Devils to make a field goal until just over eight minutes had been played. Stanford held a 14-1 lead before the Sun Devils made a basket.
"They set the tone well," Turner Thorne said. "They brought a lot of energy and we didn't have the discipline to work our offense and make them stay on defense a little bit longer."
Turner Thorne has not been pleased with ASU's offensive output recently, especially against the Cardinal.
"Over the past three games we've really just been anemic," Turner Thorne said. "We haven't shot the ball well, though we have good shooters. I just thought we were ready to score again, so I was surprised when we just didn't."
Turner Thorne sees her team's need for improvement at the end of the season.
"We need to get better," Turner Thorne said. "We need to take everything to heart. We need to learn, we need to grow."
With the struggles of the game, Turner Thorne credits her players' toughness for sticking through the game.
"I've coached here a lot of times and I've had players show ugly sides of themselves," Turner Thorne said. "I've had other teams be bickering amongst themselves and we had none of that, so I'm proud of that."
The Sun Devils will try to get back on track Sunday afternoon against the California Golden Bears.
Reach the reporter at mtonis@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @Tonis_The_Tiger
