ASU Women’s Basketball: Suffocating defense helps No. 21 Devils pull away from Wildcats late

(Photo: Marlee Smith/WCSN)

After splitting the weekend series against USC and UCLA, the no. 21 Arizona State women’s basketball team returned to action at home Friday night and defeated their in-state rival Arizona 60-47.

The Devils were looking to avenge their loss to the Arizona Wildcats in Tucson earlier this season where the Sun Devils tallied a season-low total of 39 points.

Any idea this game would feature the kind of up-tempo action that was lacking in the first edition was quickly quashed by a first quarter where neither team eclipsed 10 points.

Fueled by an electric crowd with supporters from both sides occupying the seats, neither team could find a rhythm offensively.

Kianna Ibis once again put her defensive intelligence on display, forcing two turnovers when Arizona had possession inside the paint.
After a disappointing 11-point game earlier this year against Arizona and a 10-point outing last Sunday against UCLA, Ibis was back in form on Friday.

The senior forward finished with 19 points, but her most important points of the game were her first points of the game. With 3:47 left in the first quarter, Ibis scored a layup to give the Devils a 7-2 advantage.

The basket pushed Ibis over 1,000 total points in her Sun Devil career. She would leave the game late in the fourth to a standing ovation from the near 4,000 fans in attendance, now with 1,018 career points.

“It felt great,” Ibis said. “I wasn’t really like focused on it, I had no idea until the fans were telling me and I was like ‘oh wow, that’s cool’… it was a fun game and glad we came out with the win tonight.”

The Wildcats Aari McDonald started off in her usual aggressive, jitterbug style of play that has helped her become one of the leading scorers in the Pac-12 conference, but she couldn’t find the mark through the
first two quarters.

McDonald went into the half with a team-leading seven points, indicative of just how much Arizona struggled to find buckets early on.

The Devils opened up their first comfortable lead of the game during an early second quarter burst led by the efficient three-point shot of Courtney Ekmark, eventually extending their margin to double digits late in the second quarter.

Like Ibis, Ekmark was also looking to make-up for a less-than-stellar game the last time out against Arizona. She was able to do that and then some, knocking down three triples on her way to a brilliant 20-point outing.

“Just trying to get in the rhythm and we’re really working on our offense right now because we’re showing we can defend any team,” Ekmark said.

By the end of the first half, the Sun Devils looked to be in complete control. Defensively, it may have been the team’s best half of the season, the Devils held the Wildcats to only 13 points on 25 percent shooting. The first half performance was so lackluster for Arizona that the team went to the locker room with the same amount of turnovers (13) as points.

Staring down a 12-point deficit and an offense in slow-motion, the Wildcats battled back into the game in the third quarter. The catalyst for the turnaround was a change in strategy from McDonald, who started attacking the basket and getting to the line after settling for outside jumpshots for much of the first half.

McDonald finally got going in the third, tallying 14 of her game-high 28 points in the quarter and bringing Arizona to within four points after a buzzer beating triple by Bryce Nixon of Arizona.

Yet even after the near 30 point night by McDonald, ASU head coach Charli Turner Thorne was pleased with how guards Kiara Russell and Reili Richardson performed defensively.

“I thought they did a great job,” Turner Thorne said. “We stayed on her left hand and did some good things…she’s a great player, you’re not going to shut her down completely.”

The game hung in the balance early in the fourth quarter. Arizona had switched from a zone defense to a half-court press, flustering the Devils at times into mistakes. The turnover battle reversed course as Arizona would only surrender three to ASU’s eight second-half turnovers.

But right when the Wildcats were threatening, Ibis stepped in with some tremendous play to push the game out of reach. Ibis would go on a personal 5-0 run to start the fourth quarter to extend the lead up to nine.

From there, the Sun Devils played the same high-intensity defense that had gotten them the lead to secure the win. As the final horn sounded Arizona State walked off the court owning their 15th win of the 2018-2019 season.

While it was yet another night for this team where almost everyone saw quality playing time, the heroes of this game for ASU were undoubtedly Courtney Ekmark and Kianna Ibis, the senior leaders of this team.

“That just shows you what fierce competitors those two are,” Turner Thorne said as she complimented the leadership of Ekmark and Ibis. “You knew that they weren’t not going to come out and not step up and have a great game.”

Ekmark and Ibis were the drivers, but everyone was on board for the Devils’ 15th win of the season, pushing the team to 15-6 overall and 6-4 in conference play as the team gears up to make a late-season push.

The Sun Devils face Washington State in Pullman next Thursday, Feb. 7. Tipoff is at 8 p.m. and the game can be seen on the WSU Live Stream.

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