Sophomore Quinn Dornstauder defends ASU’s basket as the team faces No. 9 Oregon State on Jan. 25, 2015. (Kat Simonovic/The State Press)In a slow offensive game, the No. 11 ASU woman’s basketball team became the fastest in school history to get to 20 wins in its 58-48 victory over Utah in Salt Lake City Sunday.
“We actually executed, especially in the second half, better than we’ve executed in a long time,” ASU head coach Charli Turner Thorne said in a post-game interview with NBC Sports 1060 AM. “We just missed… I’ll take that.”
ASU got caught with Utah’s slow offensive pace, limiting the amount of scores the Sun Devils managed.
“We created a little bit of offense with our defense (but) probably not as much as we hoped,” Turner Thorne said.
Though the time management explains the low score, it doesn’t cover ASU’s flaws in offense when they were unable to force turnovers and get out in transition.
ASU led for the first two minutes of the game before trailing for most of the first half. They didn’t retake the lead until the final 2:30.
This was in the midst of an 11-0 run spanning for 6:30 minutes. ASU forced six turnovers in this time, and Utah helped by missing four layups.
Junior guard Arnecia Hawkins finished the run by making a three-pointer with 11 seconds remaining in the first, putting ASU up 26-20 at halftime. The bench scored 13 points that half (Utah only scored three), and Hawkins was a big piece, scoring five points and making the only three she took.
Hawkins didn’t take a shot in the second half. Instead, redshirt junior guard Katie Hempen continued shooting in spite of not having a particularly strong day. She missed three of her four three-point attempts and finished with 11 points. She played a team-high 35 minutes.
The only other player with 30 minutes was sophomore forward Sophie Brunner. It’s her second game in a row with that many, and she averages about 25 per game. Brunner was in charge of guarding Utah’s best player, redshirt senior forward Taryn Wicijowski.
Brunner overmatched her. Wicijowski, averaging about 15 points per game coming in, had no points in the first half and just six in the game. She shot 3-for-10 from the field.
“Sophie is playing All-American defense for us right now,” Turner Thorne said. "(Wicijowski) rarely touched the ball when Sophie was on her."
Brunner did a good job of not allowing the ball handler to get the ball to Wicijowski. This isn’t rare — she typically does this well. Today, however, it showed up on the stat sheet: Brunner had four steals, many of which were results of jumping in the passing lane.
Freshman forward Tanaeya Boclair and junior guard Danielle Rodriguez took over the scoring load with Wicijowski’s inefficiencies. The two combined for 28 points and were rarely benched: they weren’t on the court for a total of three minutes.
A player that caused ASU just as much trouble was freshman center Joeseta Fatuesi. She forced sophomore forward Kelsey Moos into early foul trouble, and Turner Thorne elected to put freshman center Ayanna “Shaq” Edwards in the game.
Edwards is raw. She typically plays in the final few minutes of blowout games. However, with Fatuesi’s strength, ASU needed the biggest they had.
The two have some resemblance: both stand at 6-foot-4 and have the same big build. Fatuesi has more control of her body though, and Edwards played just five minutes.
Fatuesi made a huge impact for Utah. She finished with seven points and eight rebounds (four offensive) and her ability to play around the three-point line allowed the middle to clear up.
However, when she would go out there, her defender adapted and did a good job of forcing her to dribble instead of finding an open pass. Fatuesi had three turnovers.
The turnover margin was a big the reason ASU won. ASU forced 16 turnovers, scoring 18 points off of them, opposed to nine points off turnovers from Utah.
Promise Amukamara was once again another big reason for the Sun Devil’s win. She scored 11 points in the second half, including an and-one layup with about six minutes left that came right after Utah had cut the deficit to two.
“(Amukamara) really stepped up in the second half,” Turner Thorne said.
ASU walked away with a victory that wasn’t as resounding as they may have hoped, but Turner Thorne was pleased. She said that the team has overcome their “slump.”
She said that last year, ASU went through a slump in mid-February, losing three straight and failing to score 70 points in any of them.
Turner Thorne thinks they may be finished with this season’s slump, and more importantly, got it out of the way early instead of struggling down the home stretch of Pac-12 play.
“I said, ‘Great job, I think we just had it these last two weeks,’” she said. “The Oregon games and these two games, (we’re) not quite playing at the level that we did the first three weeks of Pac-12.”
Reach the reporter at logan.newman@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @Logan_Newsman
Like State Press Sports on Facebook and follow @Statepresssport on Twitter.
