(Photo: Tyler Rittenhouse/WCSN)
Arizona State dominated on the boards and used timely runs to claim victory over Buffalo 76-57. The Devils were able to out-rebound the Bulls 47-25 including having 20 offensive boards to offset the 22 turnovers the team had.
“We really weren’t happy with our rebounding last week and we came back and out-rebounded them by 18,” said head coach Charli Turner Thorne. “That’s where we need to build so we can control the games.”
ASU was led by Kianna Ibis and Sabrina Haines who had 18 and 17 points respectively and the offense was run by Reili Richardson who ended the game with ten assists.
The Sun Devils continued their trend of slow starts in the first period of play as the game remained scoreless for the first two minutes. The Sun Devils had three of their five turnovers in the quarter during the scoreless stretch.
Arizona State went through another two-minute scoreless stretch in the closing minutes of the period that allowed Buffalo to cut into the lead as they finished the quarter, hitting five of their last seven shots to close the score to 14-11.
The Bulls were able to slowly build up their lead in the second quarter after consecutive three-point shots from Cierra Dillard by hitting four of their next five shots and extending their lead to seven by the midpoint of the quarter.
Buffalo was able to draw the game close behind a three-point shot from Courtney Wilkins and a steal that led to a layup on the other end of the court by Theresa Onwuka.
Arizona State answered back with a Haines self-led 5-0 run and contributions from Robbi Ryan and Richardson that would cap off the 9-0 run by the Devils. The run pushed Arizona State’s lead to the largest of the half at ten.
Buffalo avoided a nearly four-minute drought without a field goal in the closing seconds to cut the lead to eight but was short lived as Richardson hit a jump shot right before the buzzer to keep the Devils ahead by double-digits 42-32.
The Devils came out sloppy in the third quarter of play as they had 10 of their total 22 turnovers in the quarter and shot a mere 27.3 percent the quarter. However, the team was still able to outscore Buffalo 10-9 as the Bulls struggled as well shooting 25 percent.
“It was a tough game to play, Buffalo did a really good job of ball-hawking the entire game and they haven’t really shown that type of aggressiveness on film,” said Turner Thorne. “A lot of good teaching points for this young team in terms of our turnovers and not being ready.”
Arizona State began the quarter on a two-minute scoreless drought in which the Devils had 3 of their 10 turnovers in the quarter during the stretch. The Devils continued to struggle after the scoreless stretch was ended as they only managed one field goal in the first eight minutes and thirty seconds coming off a Jamie Ruden three-point shot.
The Devils maintained the lead throughout the quarter through the defensive end of the floor by holding Buffalo scoreless for four minutes, and ended the quarter on an Ibis layup that beat the buzzer, putting ASU ahead 52-41.
ASU began the final period of play on a 7-0 run and looked to be in full control of the game until Buffalo came back with a 6-0 run of their own. Buffalo forced three Arizona State turnovers during the stretch due to a quick switch to a full-court press used by the Bulls.
The run by the Bulls put the lead to single digits for the Sun Devils, but that was the closest Buffalo would get as Arizona State had a 9-0 run that pushed the lead to 18 and ultimately put the game out of reach.
The Sun Devils play again at Wells Fargo Arena Sunday, December 3rd against UC Riverside at 2:30 pm.
