It takes a lot to get the usually mellow women’s
basketball coach Kathy Olivier angry, but the physical play of
Arizona State pushed her over the edge.
“I’m very disappointed with the referees,”
Olivier said. “It was not normal basketball. It was nonstop
handchecking and fouling, so it was almost as if the referees had
to choose which ones to call. That’s just the kind of style
that Arizona State plays.”
The Sun Devils (10-5, 4-2) used that physical style to dominate
the inside en route to a 73-58 victory over the Bruins (8-7, 3-3)
at Wells Fargo Arena. The loss pushed Arizona State ahead of UCLA
in the Pac-10 race.
“Am I disappointed we lost?” Olivier said.
“Yes. But I’m happy we kept our composure in a hostile
environment. We played hard throughout, but we’ll need to
make up for this loss somewhere along the line.”
UCLA was led by Noelle Quinn, with 15 points, and Amanda
Livingston, who came off the bench to contribute a career-high 13
points. The Bruins, however, had no answer for Arizona
State’s two main post players, Betsy Boardman and Kristen
Kovesdy. Boardman finished with 16 points while Kovesdy tallied 24
points. In all, Arizona State out-rebounded UCLA, 44-27, including
picking up 16 offensive rebounds.
“We got down early, and we started playing our up-tempo
defense,” Olivier said. “But that means you can concede
a lot of easy baskets, and you have to give credit to their post
players ““ they stepped it up.”
Arizona State started to pull away midway through the first
half. With UCLA down by only two, the Sun Devils went on an 18-5
run behind Kovesdy’s play. At the same time, UCLA went into
an offensive drought, going almost seven minutes without scoring a
single point as the Bruins trailed 35-24 at halftime.
The second half wasn’t much better; ASU shot 63 percent
from the field. The Sun Devils pushed their lead to as much as 24
points before UCLA made one final run with the fullcourt pressure
and cut the lead down to 14. In the end, however, the lead was too
much to overcome.
Things don’t get much easier for UCLA. They head to Tucson
for a Saturday afternoon matchup with second-place Arizona, whose
offense revolves around interior post presence Shawntinice
Polk.
“We have to set the tempo and control what we give them
and what we don’t, and hopefully, what we don’t is the
inside play,” Olivier said. “She’ll get her
points, but if we do what we need to do, we’ll keep
Shawntinice to a minimum.”