(Photo: Misha Jones/WCSN)
They say the most desperate team wins, and the No. 8 UCLA Bruins were that team Sunday afternoon in Tempe.
The two teams that competed in Sunday’s game at Desert Financial Arena were on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Arizona State came in off of a triple-overtime home victory over USC on Friday, while the UCLA Bruins were in need of a bounce-back win after losing to UArizona in Tucson.
ASU head coach Charli Turner Thorne didn’t think her team gave the “Sun Devil effort” she expected from them. She credited UCLA’s loss at UArizona for giving the Bruins a competitive edge.
“Obviously they’ve been dominating and doing great and then they get blown out,” said Turner Thorne. “Of course they were going to respond.”
Sun Devil senior Jamie Ruden echoed that sentiment.
“It’s always the tougher team that wins, and I think we could’ve been a little bit tougher, been a little bit more poised when they were playing physical,” said Ruden.
The Sun Devils and Bruins played a competitive first half, which ended with ASU leading, 34-32.
Both teams played the scrappy basketball typical of the Pac-12 Conference. Players dove on the floor, fought for loose balls and got limbs tied up time and again.
UCLA’s Japreece Dean finished the half with 12 points, doing most of her scoring off of down screens and hand offs. Arizona State senior guard Robbi Ryan scored in similar ways, and headed into the locker room with 9 points on 4-6 shooting.
The second half was all UCLA. The Bruins jumped out on a 13-6 run, forcing Turner Thorne to call a timeout with 4:19 left in the third quarter.
Dean and her teammates Charisma Osborne and Michaela Onyenwere took control for the rest of the second half. Dean ended up with 18 points for the game, while Osborne finished with 15 points, and Onyenwere with 14.
Ryan was mostly neutralized after the halftime break. UCLA head coach Cori Close could be heard calling out ASU’s plays before the Sun Devils could run them, and the shots Ryan got in the first two quarters were no longer open.
Turner Thorne said that her team’s offense was also halted in part due to a lack of understanding by her players.
“That’s where some of our kids not knowing their playbook really hurts,” Turner Thorne said. “We’ve been having that all year long but it’s been really more challenging when you play against pressure.”
Defensively, the Sun Devils didn’t fare much better. The 70 points UCLA scored in the game were 14 points more than ASU allows on average.
Osborne hit two three-pointers in the third quarter that Turner Thorne said should have never been open.
“We just didn’t guard her, you know. We didn’t do a good job. I mean we were just sitting there on the bench going, ‘What are we doing?’”
The Sun Devils simply didn’t get it done with their defense and effort, which are two key elements of their style of play under Turner Thorne. If they want to go far in the conference tournament, they need to get back to those elements on a more consistent basis.
Moving forward, the Sun Devils will need to regroup quickly before heading a into big weekend in Oregon against two Top 10 programs.
