The ASU women’s basketball team managed to grab a lead in the first half against No. 4 Tennessee (4-0), but mistakes and a stifling UT defense led to the Sun Devils’ first loss of the season Sunday, 80-64.
Redshirt senior guard Dymond Simon again led ASU (2-1) in scoring with 13 points and five assists, and redshirt sophomore forward Janae Fulcher shot 4-for-5 and had eight points and five rebounds. But it was Lady Vols junior forward Glory Johnson who stole the show with 14 points and 15 rebounds, her first double-double of the season.
ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said it was the little mistakes that ultimately doomed the Sun Devils.
“This whole game screams out attention to detail, hitting your free throws, boxing out, taking a pass and making a pass — all those little things — and we’re too inconsistent,” Turner Thorne said.
And while UT is the fourth-ranked team in the country, for Turner Thorne, it was not an excuse.
“It was everything we knew was coming, and it’s just a matter of this team growing,” Turner Thorne said.
There were early warning signs when the Lady Vols jumped out to a 7-0 lead in the first few minutes of the game. But the Sun Devils began to battle back, and finally took a hard fought 18-17 lead on a shot by freshman guard Adrianne Thomas with 8:38 left in the half.
At that point, however, although ASU’s defense still looked good, the offense came to a complete halt, and the Sun Devils would not score again in the half. UT scored 16 unanswered points to lead 33-18 at halftime, a stretch that really hurt ASU, Simon said.
“It was definitely a struggle for us at that point,” Simon said. “We definitely had some lapses on defense — not communicating as well as we should have, rebounding, all of the above. It was a learning experience today and I’m happy that this happened to us.”
UT only managed to shoot 34.3 percent in the first half, the lone bright spot in the half for ASU and a testament to the Sun Devils’ tough perimeter defense. But the half-court trap UT put on the Sun Devils led to turnovers late in the first half, and ASU finished with 17, compared to 12 for the Lady Vols.
However, ASU redshirt junior forward/center Kali Bennett said turnovers weren’t as important as rebounding.
“Turnovers are always huge, especially against an offensive team like Tennessee, but if I had to give a reason for the game, it would probably be their offensive rebounds and our lack of offensive rebounds,” Bennett said. “When they picked up their pressure, we didn’t necessarily pick up ours, and that’s not the mentality we should have.”
At the end of the game, UT led offensive rebounds 19-11, and total rebounds 45-36.
In the second half, the Sun Devils shot 51.9 percent from the field, but weren’t able to pull UT back, and an 11-4 run to close out the game was a classic example of too little, too late.
ASU allowed the Lady Vols to shoot 57.6 percent in the second half, a marked difference from the first half and the reason the Sun Devils were unable to overcome the deficit, Turner Thorne said.
“We scored better, we took care of the ball, but we just never got our Sun Devil defense going,” Turner Thorne said. “And that’s the thing I think I’m most disappointed about.
“To give up 80 points to anybody is unacceptable.”
The Sun Devils return to action Friday against Providence at the Junkanoo Jam in the Bahamas.
Reach the reporter at egrasser@asu.edu
