(Photo: Paige Cook/WCSN)
On Friday evening, Arizona State women’s basketball took on an Oregon State Beavers team for the first time since February of 2020. The long-awaited matchup ended wildly with the Sun Devils coming out on top, 67-57.
Heading into this game, Sun Devil guard Jade Loville led the team in points per game, and she had no intention of slowing down. The Devils were led by an unconscious Loville who ended with 33 points, nearly half of the ASU offensive output. Loville came out hot against the Beavers with nine first quarter points.
“The possessions we were patient is when we were the best,” head coach Charli Turner Thorne said postgame.
A good portion of Loville’s buckets came late in the shot clock due to a patient Sun Devil offense. Against the Beaver’s zone defense the Sun Devils were moving the ball in succession and had assists on four of their six first quarter buckets. However, Loville was not the only one contributing offensively, as guard Taya Hanson tagged along with 15 of her own, seven of those coming in the fourth quarter.
Scoring only seemed to come easy in the first half as the Sun Devils went on a five-and-a-half minute stretch without scoring the ball in the third quarter. While the Sun Devils couldn’t score, the Beavers could. In that stretch, the Beavers dropped 14 points and took the lead at the end of the third quarter.
Defensively, Turner Thorne wanted physicality, and she got all of that.
“They were pounding inside and we were soft, and we weren’t doing our work early. We weren’t exactly playing them the way we wanted to,” Turner Thorne said. “They adjusted, they moved their feet, they kind of denied a little better.”
A major key the Devils were able to exploit was the Beavers guard, Talia Von Oelhoeffen. Von Oelhoeffen averaged 3.38 turnovers coming into the game, leading the Pac-12, and the Devil defense was active from the start. Von Oelhoeffen had two turnovers in the first quarter to go along with Oregon State’s seven. The active hands from ASU did not stop there as the Devils forced 19 turnovers throughout the course of the game.
One player that Arizona State had to be cautious about was the 6-foot-9 forward Jelena Mitrovic. The Devils avoided that by drawing her out to the wing. That strategy opened up good looks in the paint, but also helped spread the floor productively. Not only did this allow for coherent scoring, but it also assisted Arizona State in its effort to crash the offensive glass and get some crucial second chance opportunities.
Where Mitrovic was a problem for the Devils was offensively. With the Sun Devils tallest player standing at 6-foot-4, the extra five inches Mitrovic has allowed her to be in the post for a majority of the game, and Arizona State was forced to apply pressure with a double team. All in all, this tired out the Sun Devils.
One area that Arizona State has struggled and Turner Thorne talks about weekly is in its ability to shoot the ball. Though having a good performance scoring the ball, shot efficiency was still lacking for ASU, as they only knocked down 35 percent of the shots they took. Though shots may not be falling right now, Turner Thorne is excited for what is to come.
“We have been there before, three hard quarters, fourth quarter is really a gut check, stick to the game plan. Do the little things; rebound, play defense. It really came down to getting stops and then executing on the offensive side,” said Loville.
In a game that was back-and-forth the entire way, the final outcome came down to the closing minutes. Finishing the game off, Hanson hit six free throws due to a double bonus foul call and two technical foul calls on Oregon State’s head coach, Scott Rueck.
This insane finish allowed the Sun Devils to rally for their second win within the conference. The Pac-12 is tallying up to be one of the best conferences in NCAA women’s basketball which means that Arizona State has no room for error as the 2022 regular season begins to wind down.
The Sun Devils stay in Tempe this weekend, as they take on the nationally ranked Oregon Ducks on Sunday, Feb. 6.
