The ASU women's basketball team begins the second half of Pac-10 play this week when it faces Oregon State tonight at 6:30 p.m. and Oregon on Saturday at 11 a.m. at Wells Fargo Arena.
The Sun Devils (13-7, 7-2 Pac-10) are currently tied with No. 7 Stanford for second place in the Pac-10 and sit one game behind No. 10 California.
However, ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said the Sun Devils have yet to put 40 solid minutes of basketball together or to reach their full potential.
"Our plan is to peak now, to take this second half and start playing our best basketball," she said. "Lessons have been learned. We know what we need to do and we're fired up to do it."
Junior guard Briann January agreed that the Sun Devils still have not put all the pieces together, but still got wins during the first round of conference play.
"Looking back on those games, we know we can play better and we got all of those wins," she said.
Turner Thorne said continuing to build a collective toughness is what the Sun Devils need to do to get over the hump, and on Tuesday they came up with a new slogan that illustrated just how close they believe they are to achieving that.
They just need to shed a few pounds, figuratively speaking.
"We've grown [and] we've improved so much," Turner Thorne said. "It's like that person on a diet and they've just got to lose that last five pounds."
The quest to start peaking at the right part of the season will begin with the Oregon schools. ASU won the first meeting with both the Beavers (10-10, 3-6 Pac-10) and Ducks (10-10, 4-5 Pac-10) in the Pacific Northwest earlier this month.
But the Sun Devils had to overcome second half deficits in each game.
ASU was down by as many as 14 points to the Beavers during the second half of the last meeting, but used a 22-6 run and a 17-8 run to pull itself out of the hole and leave Corvallis with a 69-60 win.
"We didn't clamp it down on defense [the last time we played OSU]," Turner Thorne said. "We were poor offensively as well at that point and didn't rebound as well as we needed to."
The Beavers possess a powerful offensive and are second in the Pac-10 in three-point field goal percentage.
OSU senior guard Ashley Allen ranks second in the conference in scoring, averaging 16.9 points per game. Junior guard Brittney Davis (13.4 points per game) and freshman guard Talisa Rhea (10.9 points per game) also average in double figures for the Beavers, while junior guard Mercedes Fox-Griffin leads the Pac-10 in assists per game (4.83).
The Beavers will be trying to avoid their third straight road loss Thursday, after going 0-2 against USC and UCLA in Los Angeles last week.
After two disappointing home losses to Cal and Stanford two weeks ago, the Sun Devils rebounded to beat Washington and Washington State in games that Turner Thorne made changes to the starting lineup.
Sophomore forward Kayli Murphy got her first two career starts, while sophomore guard Dymond Simon was inserted back into the starting five.
"We've got probably eight or nine people in the mix to start in any given week," Turner Thorne said. "Basically, if [a player's] being more consistent in core areas, [they] might get the start. It's just kind of who earns it that week. It doesn't necessarily mean roles are changing."
Reach the reporter at gina.mizell@asu.edu.
