Oregon State forced the ASU women’s basketball team to play to the final seconds of all three of their meetings this season.
And once again, the Sun Devils came through in the clutch, this time with a 50-44 victory in the opening game of the Pac-10 tournament on Wednesday afternoon.“I think I speak for the whole Pac-10 when I say Oregon State is a tough team,” ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said. “They just don’t go away, and all three of our games were just hard.”
ASU senior guard Dymond Simon led all scorers with 13 points and three assists, but the Sun Devils had key contributors from all over the lineup.
Junior forward Kimberly Brandon, who scored a combined 34 points in the other two games against OSU, was strangely quiet and finished with just two points and six rebounds. But two other seniors, forward Becca Tobin and guard Tenaya Watson, picked up the slack, combining for 17 points and 10 rebounds.
This game was almost a mirror image of the one played on Saturday in Oregon. ASU (20-9, 12-7 Pac-10) built up a sizeable lead of 15 points just after halftime but then allowed the Beavers (9-21, 2-16) to come within a possession with just under six minutes left.
“That was a bad kind of stretch for us,” Simon said. “We didn’t play our defense like we were supposed to, like coach said. And once we really started to lock in on their plays and those top offensive scorers, I think that we made a big difference.”
The Beavers did manage to shoot 40.9 percent from the field, but ASU finished with a crucial 35-25 advantage on the boards.
Once again, turnovers were high for both teams, but Turner Thorne said she was happy that the team kept pushing for the win.
“Obviously we didn’t have as strong an offensive game as we wanted to, so we just did what we do at Arizona State,” Turner Thorne said. “We just buckled down and said, ‘OK, let’s crank up the defense,’ and we really just stayed with things and found a way.”
OSU freshman guard Alyssa Martin and sophomore guard Sage Indendi both finished with 10 points and three rebounds for the Beavers.
The first half was very similar to Saturday’s opening period. Neither team shot well in the early stages of the half, but eventually the shots started to fall for the Sun Devils.
At halftime, ASU had a 27-20 lead, which would balloon to a 15-point advantage just three minutes into the second half.
But Martin would hit a few key jumpers, and the Beavers slowly came back.
Just as OSU fought their way to within three points with 3:26 left, Tobin provided a beautiful feed to a streaking Simon in the lane for a layup and the foul to put ASU up by six.
“We just try to read off of each other as much as we can,” Simon said. “I saw her getting doubled, and they were leaving me wide open at the top. We practice this almost every day.”
A full-court pass to Watson with 17.6 seconds left gave the guard an easy bucket and ended all hopes of a Beaver comeback.
“We’re not really that comfortable with pulling away,” Turner Thorne joked during the press conference. “We like to make it interesting. Television likes that, right?”
Turner Thorne also gave credit to the Beavers for hanging in there and pushing ASU to the limit all three games.
“A lot of kudos to them,” she said. “They’ve got some exciting things in the future.”
The Sun Devils will face Cal on Thursday. The winner will advance to the semifinals on Friday to face UCLA.
“We’re excited to be alive and to continue to play and to get stronger as this tournament goes on,” Turner Thorne said.
Reach the reporter at egrasser@asu.edu
