The youth and inexperience of the ASU women’s basketball team, especially on the perimeter, has hampered the Sun Devils throughout the 2009-10 campaign.
Tuesday night, those shortcomings ended ASU’s season.
The Sun Devils lost to Brigham Young 61-53 in the second round of the WNIT to close the book on a transition year for a program that missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time since the 2003-04 season.
ASU suffered from another sub-par shooting performance (35.6 percent) and had several miscues down the stretch in a tightly-contested second half that ultimately cost the Sun Devils (18-14) a chance to grab the victory.
“Decision-making was what bit us in the butt the entire season,” ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said. “We can talk about lapses and effort, but that was by far our biggest weakness. Had we been better than that, we would have been five or six or seven wins further along than we are.”
Down 51-48 with just over two minutes to play, ASU had a chance to tie or cut into the lead, but junior guard Tenaya Watson was called for an offensive foul to turn the ball back over to BYU.
The Cougars took advantage.
Junior forward Coriann Wood drilled a wide open 3-pointer from the right elbow to put BYU up by six with 1:56 to play, and that turned out to be the shot that stuck a fork in ASU’s season.
Watson was then called for another charge on ASU’s ensuing possession, and BYU (22-9) answered again when junior guard Jazmine Foreman connected on a layup to make the score 56-48 in favor of the Cougars with 1:08 to go.
“I don’t know what the heck we were doing, to be honest,” Turner Thorne said. “We called [the plays] we called, and we just completely ran people over or just forced something or got out of finishing the play. But that’s what we’ve done all year.”
BYU then connected on five of its six free throws in the final minute to seal the win.
The Sun Devils trailed 31-23 at the half but used a red-hot start to the second frame to quickly turn the contest into a back-and-forth affair.
ASU began the period on a 10-0 run and did not allow the Cougars to score for the first six minutes of the half.
A layup by Watson at the 14:16 mark gave the Sun Devils a 33-31 advantage, their first lead since it was 16-15 midway through the first half.
The rest of the game then featured three ties and six lead changes over the next four minutes until a jumper by BYU junior guard Haley Hall gave the Cougars a 42-40 advantage and ultimately the upper hand for good.
“We went in at halftime and we really just tried to pull together, defensively especially,” senior forward Kayli Murphy said. “They were getting a lot of open shots the first half, so [in the] second half we came out strong, but I think it’s just been the same thing all season long — that we haven’t been consistent — so it kind of dwindled and they got some runs.”
The Cougars took their largest lead of the half at 47-42 on a jumper by freshman forward/center Alexis Kaufusi before a bucket by ASU senior guard Danielle Orsillo capped a 6-2 spurt to close the gap to 49-48 with 4:50 left.
But BYU upped that advantage to three points on a pair of free throws by sophomore forward Kristen Riley with 3:17 left before the dagger trifecta by Wood.
Turner Thorne started the same five freshmen that she did in ASU’s first-round win against New Mexico State, but the result wasn’t as effective, as the Cougars struck early with a pair of 3-pointers by Foreman and Hall in the opening minute to put ASU in a quick 6-0 hole.
The cushion later grew to 15-6 on a layup by Kaufusi, but the Sun Devils responded by ripping off a 10-0 spurt to take their first lead of the game at 16-15 with 8:19 remaining in the first half.
But BYU answered back by outscoring ASU 16-7 the rest of the period to take a 31-23 lead into the locker room.
The Cougars shot 56.5 percent in the first half, and the Sun Devils connected on just 26.7 percent of their field goals.
“They hit shots, especially the first half,” Turner Thorne said. “Anytime they were open, they knocked it down. We didn’t. We didn’t step up and hit shots at all.”
Orsillo scored 13 points to finish her Sun Devil career in third place on ASU’s all-time scoring list with 1,383 points. Murphy had 10 points, nine rebounds and four steals in her final game in maroon and gold.
Foreman scored a game-high 17 points, for BYU and Hall tallied 14 points and seven steals.
Reach the reporter at gina.mizell@asu.edu
