(Photo: Madison Sorenson/WCSN)
TEMPE – With 54 seconds remaining and Arizona State women’s basketball down 60-55, graduate guard Gabby Elliott burst off a screen with a clean look at the rim from the top of the key. Mere seconds after the ball left her fingertips, Elliott’s legs flailed in opposite directions, a futile attempt to induce the harsh screech of a whistle that never blew.
Her shot caromed off the rim and into the safe haven of BYU guard Olivia Hamlin, leading to two more Cougar free throws that effectively shut the door on the Sun Devils’ chances to come back. Elliott’s action was reminiscent of a fish pulled out of water, a last-ditch effort to return to the familiar environment that is the free-throw line.
The mid-air writhe wasn’t just an encapsulation of one play – it was a retelling of ASU’s (22-8, 9-8) second-half offensive woes en route to a 66-61 loss in its home finale to BYU (19-10, 8-9).
The Sun Devils’ 13-point halftime lead and 44.4 percent shooting from the field in the opening two quarters turned out to be anomalies that ASU would stray far from rather than trends it could build off of.
Over the course of the second half, every Sun Devils shot appeared to hang in the air for an eternity and clang off the basket or lack arc and graze the bottom of the net. Few attempts were hoisted with the conviction that ASU required in the midst of a barrage of Cougar threes that ultimately buried the Sun Devils at home.
Even if they were, BYU employed a zone defense that frustrated ASU to the tune of 28.1 percent shooting from the field and 15.4 percent splits from three over the final 20 minutes.
“They got some good stuff (in the first half), but we continued to talk in the huddle about ‘they’re gonna make some shots, but the way that they’re playing offensively plays into our favor,’” BYU head coach Lee Cummard said. “We prepared for that. We worked on zone a little bit more in the two days preparing for this game than we normally would, and it was huge for us in the second half.”
Long threes generated long rebounds and fastbreak opportunities that the Cougars had a firm grasp over, with 13 points from nine Sun Devil turnovers in the third quarter. ASU had no response in the middle of a 23-4 run across a six-minute span, coughing the ball up on multiple occasions and forcing up looks that never appeared comfortable.
Offensive process matters, but execution was where the Sun Devils lagged behind. With their two leading scorers, junior forward McKinna Brackens and Elliott, unable to conjure up buckets, ASU’s ability to impede BYU’s smoking-hot run floundered.
Brackens, Elliott and senior guard Marley Washenitz combined to shoot a scant 5-22 in the second half, an efficiency that usually doesn’t result in wins. The lack of shooting from beyond the arc allowed the Cougars to stuff the paint, as Brackens routinely came up short on fadeaway mid-range jumpers and the Sun Devils spent precious seconds of the shot clock haphazardly dribbling around the perimeter to create advantages that never materialized.
Instead of turning towards another source to jumpstart the offense, ASU put all their eggs into their veteran’s baskets, a move that ended up blowing smoke back into the Sun Devils faces.
“You got to really just dig deep and then hit shots,” head coach Molly Miller said. “I think that’s the biggest thing with this team, we don’t quite have that piece. We can play as hard as we want, but at this level … we got to rise up and hit shots and that solves a lot of issues.”
