After a dominating performance against Colorado State on Saturday, the main message from the ASU women’s basketball team was that there is still work to be done.
Senior guard Dymond Simon again led the Sun Devils (6-2) with 14 points and 3 assists, and junior guard Kimberly Brandon and junior forward Janae Fulcher each finished with double-digit points in a 72-56 win over the Rams (5-4) in Tempe.
“I thought we had a good team win,” ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said. “I think Colorado State’s a very good team. I thought we did a really good job defensively and our zone offense is improving.”
Eleven different players scored for the Sun Devils, who are starting to see the kind of ball distribution they were looking for at the start of the season.
“We did have good balance, almost everybody scored, and I think we have that kind of team,” Turner Thorne said. “There’s not a person on our team who can’t score the basketball.”
But rebounding, the main focus for the Sun Devils coming into the game, is one area where they can still improve, Turner Thorne said.
“They had two offensive rebounds in the first half, and then we sort of let up in the second half, so I’m disappointed that we didn’t continue to rebound for 40 minutes,” Turner Thorne said.
What the Sun Devils didn’t do was shut down CSU junior forward Kim Mestdagh as she finished with a game-high 19 points and seven rebounds. Equally important for the Rams was freshman forward Sam Martin, who had 17 points on an impressive 81 percent shooting.
Fulcher said the team could have done a better job shutting down Mestdagh.
“It would have been a lot better if we could have keyed on the two players that scored the most, but for the most part we did shut down the other players,” Fulcher said. “They weren’t able to do what they wanted to do.”
However, ASU held the rest of the team to just 20 points and scored 23 points off the Rams’ turnovers to put the game out of reach.
CSU never led in a game that saw only two ties, at 2-2 and at 4-4 in the early goings. Similar to last weekend’s ASU classic, the Sun Devils saw scoring from across the board, and took a 15-point lead into halftime.
In the second half, CSU actually out-rebounded the Sun Devils, but it wasn’t enough, as ASU built the lead up to 22 at one point in the half.
“I’m smiling because we shot 52 percent in the second half, because we’ve had some high-shooting games so far,” Turner Thorne said.
The Sun Devils look to extend their three-game winning streak at South Dakota State on Thursday.
Injuries
Senior guard Tenaya Watson went to the floor hard during a scramble play in the first half, and sat out the second half as a precaution, Turner Thorne said.
“We’re not sure on Tenaya, she kind of got a hip pointer, but she’s obviously been a huge asset to us,” Turner Thorne said. “To have our bench step up and have some other players do some great things on both ends of the floor was really nice to see.”
Reach the reporter at egrasser@asu.edu
