ASU women’s basketball head coach Charli Turner Thorne argues a call vs. Cal women’s basketball at Wells Fargo Arena on Feb. 8, 2015. The Sun Devils lost on that day but won on Feb. 15 at Oregon. (Daniel Kwon/The State Press)No. 12 ASU women’s basketball broke its two-game losing streak with a 72-52 victory over Oregon.
We thought, as a coaching staff, (we had a) little better flow to our offense than we’ve had in some recent games,” ASU head coach Charli Turner Thorne said in a postgame interview with NBC Sports Radio 1060 AM.
The Sun Devils got going quickly, putting up 39 points in the first half. It was not efficient, though; they shot just 36.8 percent as a team.
They went to sophomore center Quinn Dornstauder quite often, and she missed all six of her field goals in the first half.
She finished 0 for 8 from the field but made 7 of 8 free throws. Sophomore forward Sophie Brunner finished just 3 of 11 from the field.
“Quinn and Sophie struggled a little bit,” Turner Thorne said. “We’re really going to break this down for them because they’re just rushing in there a little bit.”
The two were able to overcome the poor shooting with offensive rebound efforts.
In its first five possessions, ASU grabbed four of them, three of which came from one of the bigs. The trend continued in the half; Brunner grabbed four and Dornstauder nabbed three.
ASU had 12 total in the first half and 18 in the game. Brunner finished with seven.
These came even with Oregon’s junior forward Jillian Alleyne manning the paint. She came into the game second in the NCAA in rebounds with 15.5 per game.
Today, she grabbed 10 rebounds, well below her average. Oregon only got 25 as a team. ASU got 42.
This is the type of play Turner Thorne has been pushing over the entire season and in the last few weeks in particular. She talked about the effort against all aspects of Alleyne’s game in general.
Alleyne finished with 19 points on 8 of 8 shooting, but Turner Thorne was pleased. Every ASU post player took a turn guarding her, she said, and they did well.
“I thought overall (they) did a nice job of just not letting her completely take over the game,” she said. “(Oregon was) trying to go to her every single time and Sophie and the post were working their tails off.”
The offense, which is getting over a two-week slump, came alive. Every player scored, with the exception of freshman forward Nicole Iademarco and junior guard Isidora Purkovic, who played in just the final minute of the game.
“We needed our bench to be great,” Turner Thorne said. “We didn’t have Kelsey (Moos) and our starters have played a ton of minutes and we needed our bench to step up and they stepped up big time.”
The team started slow in the second half, though. ASU scored only seven points in the first nine minutes. Oregon cut the Sun Devils' lead in half.
Senior guard Promise Amukamara came alive. She made the next three shots for ASU and finished with 12 points in the half. She had a team-high 16 points overall.
“It was nice to see our guards get going a little bit today,” Turner Thorne said.
Fellow guard Katie Hempen iced the game with about four minutes remaining. She hit a distant 3-pointer with three seconds on the shot clock to put ASU up 62-46.
“Was that like 35 feet?” Turner Thorne said after the game. “As soon as she set, I was like, ‘She’s going to make this.’”
It was the first time ASU scored 70 points in a game since Jan. 23, when the team also played Oregon.
On the other side of the 3-point line, ASU’s defense was strong. Oregon came into the weekend with a top-40 3-point shooting percent in the nation, scoring at a 35.9 percent clip. Freshman guard Lexi Bando was ninth in the nation, shooting 45.7 percent.
Oregon made just one of its 12 attempts. Bando didn’t make either of her tries.
“They have really good shooters,” Turner Thorne said. “We were really focused on it. We didn’t give them clean looks.”
Reach the reporter at logan.newman@asu.edu or follow @Logan_Newsman on Twitter.
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