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ASU Women’s Basketball: Sun Devils return home to host the Bay Area schools

(Photo: Tyler Rittenhouse/WCSN)

After two straight road victories to open conference play, the Arizona State women’s basketball team is back in the AP top-25.

In late November, the Sun Devils fell out of the AP rankings after sustaining back-to-back losses to now-No. 5 Mississippi State and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay in the Cancun Challenge.

Since the trip to Mexico, No. 25 ASU has won seven of its last eight games and the Sun Devils average margin of victory over that span has been 26.4 points per game. This weekend, ASU has a chance to ascend even higher in the rankings with No. 23 Cal and No. 24 Stanford coming into Wells Fargo Arena.

“That’s what it is with the whole Pac-12 conference. It’s tough teams,” ASU junior forward Kiana Ibis said. “We just have to bring a big defensive effort in order to stop top players and big scorers.”

In ASU’s last game against Utah on New Year’s Eve, the Sun Devils outlasted the Utes 83-81 in Salt Lake City. The game was one of the first times this season that ASU has gone down to the wire with an opponent.

Sophomore forward Jamie Ruden scored five points in the final minute of the game and ASU held on to win a thriller.

“That was so much better for us than winning by 10 or 15,” ASU head coach Charli Turner Thorne said. “… To get a one possession game was fantastic. You can try to simulate it in practice, but it’s not the same. For this team to have success in that situation … that’s something that grows your toughness muscle.”

With the Bay Area schools visiting Tempe this weekend, there is certainly no room for relaxation in an elite Pac-12 conference that features six teams in the AP top-25.

This week, Stanford jumped back into the top-25 after falling out of the rankings for the first time since 2001.

With a 6-6 start and a season that looked to be in trouble, the Cardinal responded with a bang to open Pac-12 play, defeating No. 11 UCLA and USC at Maples Pavilion.

While Stanford might have had a rough start to its 2017-18 campaign, the Cardinal always seem to be in midst of things by the end of the season. Turner Thorne, who played under Stanford head coach Tara Vanderveer, knows that the team on “The Farm” can’t be overlooked.

“There has been years that they have had slow starts, but they never have slow finishes because obviously it’s a veteran coaching staff,” Turner Thorne said. “They know how to get their teams to keep improving.”

One of the key factors to Stanford’s early struggles was the absence of senior guard Brittany McPhee, who missed nine games early in the season due to a foot injury.

When McPhee has been on the floor, the senior from Washington is averaging 21.4 points per contest. Last week, she was named the espnW player of the week after putting up 47 points over her last two games.

On Sunday afternoon, ASU sophomore guard Robbi Ryan and the Sun Devil defense will be posed with the tough task of trying to limit McPhee.

“McPhee is going to be hard (to guard),” Turner Thorne said. “Robbi has kind of been our stopper this year, so she is the one who has been drawing the top perimeter scorers…we have to be talking better and helping better, and that is going to be huge for both of these games. You do not want to play Stanford or Cal one-on-one.”

As for the Golden Bears, ASU will be daunted with yet another difficult assignment when Cal junior forward Kristine Anigwe makes a homecoming Friday night. Anigwe is a Phoenix native and a Desert Vista High School alum.

In Anigwe’s senior year at Desert Vista, she was named the Gatorade Player of the Year in the State of Arizona. From the Valley to Berkeley, Anigwe has continued her fantastic play at the collegiate level.

Now in her third season under Cal head coach Lindsay Gottlieb, Anigwe has blossomed into a star, earning Pac-12 first team honors in her first two seasons in the Bay Area and averaging nearly 17 points a game this season.

“We know they are going to her, so just being able to stop her (Anigwe) is a big key for our team,” Ibis said.

With another weekend full of tough Pac-12 opponents on the schedule for ASU, the Sun Devils will look to remain undefeated at Wells Fargo Arena–a place where neither the ASU men’s or women’s basketball teams have lost this season.

Tipoff between Cal and ASU is set for Friday, Jan. 5, at 8 p.m. MST, and the Sun Devils will host Stanford on Sunday, Jan. 7, at 2 p.m. MST.