ASU Women’s Basketball: Sun Devils fall after shaky third quarter

(Photo via Janaé Bradford/WCSN)

TEMPE – Sitting at 12th place in the Pac-12 Conference, it seemed that Friday night’s game against 11th-place California might be Arizona State women’s basketball’s best remaining chance to earn its first win in conference play. ASU welcomed the Golden Bears to Desert Financial Arena with high hopes.

But the Sun Devils’ third quarter woes once again prevented them from tallying the win. ASU (7-15, 0-13 Pac-12) dropped its 11th straight game, losing to the Cal Golden Bears (12-12, 3-10) 72-61 in Tempe.

“Not a complete 40 [minutes], and that’s what we’re trying to get us to do,” head coach Natasha Adair said. “The message was finish. I thought we had opportunities. I thought we showed some fight, some competitiveness. … There were moments, pivotal moments in the game, that we just have to capitalize on. I thought we had a late burst in the fourth, but you’ve got to put together a full 40.”

ASU came out aggressive to start the game behind its tight defense, forcing the Golden Bears into nine turnovers in just the first quarter. Junior guard Jaddan Simmons led the charge with five of ASU’s nine first-half steals.

Offensively, ASU played an efficient first quarter, shooting 50% from the field. Despite playing limited minutes this season, junior center Imogen Greenslade entered the game about halfway through the first frame and scored four quick points off the bench.

Moving into the second quarter, Greenslade picked up another two points and looked to continue her active level of play, but while pedaling backward, Greenslade rolled her ankle and tripped over the foot of a Cal defender. The Australian junior left the game with just under eight minutes remaining in the half and did not return.

“It’s next teammate up,” Adair said. “We look at it as an opportunity to pick our sister up. … In this sport, and in any sport, things happen. We can’t predict that. It did let the air out of the room a little bit, but I think her energy was what we wanted to keep going, and I think her teammates tried to do that. … We just hope that she’s going to be okay.”

Following Greenslade’s exit, the Golden Bears took advantage of the Sun Devils’ energy shift, initiating a 12-5 run to take a five-point lead. Within this stretch, sophomore guard Jayda Curry and senior guard Leilani McIntosh both added five points. Curry would go on to score a game-high 21 points in addition to five rebounds and four assists.

The Sun Devils rallied late in the second quarter to close the deficit to just one going into the halftime break. The surge was punctuated by a flashy layup by junior guard Tyi Skinner that got the sparse crowd roaring. Defended by McIntosh, Skinner hesitated to get the defender out of position, then quickly drove by her before using all 5 feet, 5 inches to Eurostep around another defender, finishing on the left side of the hoop.

Although ASU had the momentum going into the locker room, it seemingly all disappeared once the third quarter started. In one of its poorest third-quarter performances of the season, ASU scored a measly three points on 1-for-15 shooting from the field while the Golden Bears posted 17. ASU’s lone third-quarter points came via a fast break layup from junior guard Sydney Erikstrup and a made free throw by Skinner.

“[We] got the looks, they just didn’t fall,” Adair said. “We got looks at the rim. We got looks in the midrange. So again, it’s just continuing to work, continuing to get in the gym, continuing to work on those opportunities that we’re going to get because it’s the same shots we took in the fourth and we had 25 points.”

11 of those 25 points came from the free throw line, as ASU fought to get shots up in the paint and draw fouls, but there was nothing the Sun Devils could do to overcome their abysmal third quarter performance.

“We opened the floor, so they were able to play downhill,” Adair said. “They were able to get two feet in the paint, get to the rim, put foul pressure on … We knew we could put foul pressure on them and just be aggressive and that activates us. It also gives us an opportunity to get to the free throw line and we got there 25 times tonight.”

ASU kept itself in the game with an 80% clip from the charity stripe, but it was not enough to outweigh a near 30% outing from the field and 9.1% from three-point range.

Following Friday’s loss, only one remaining opponent on ASU’s schedule sits below .500 on the season, and three of those five teams currently reside inside the AP Top 25 poll. Even though time is running out for the Sun Devils to pick up their first conference win – and a daunting matchup against No. 6 Stanford coming next – Adair still has high hopes.

“The thing that we look at is who our next opponent is, and we prepare our team no different,” Adair said. “We’ll go. We’ll watch. We’ll learn. We’ll prep. We’ll scout and prepare to win. Every game that we play, we prepare to win, no matter who the opponent is. Every team in this conference has shown that they can be beaten, and so that’s just the mindset that we have. We don’t ever prepare to not win. We prepare to win.”