For the second consecutive time this season, Arizona State
showed a penchant for knowing exactly how to slow down the UCLA
women’s basketball team’s potent offense.
But on Saturday, the Sun Devils may have also dented the
Bruins’ NCAA Tournament aspirations as well.
Hoping to at least achieve a split in Arizona and make a
statement to the NCAA tournament selection committee, UCLA achieved
neither, losing 80-59 to Arizona State in a game the Bruins were
never in from the opening tip.
UCLA, which owned the top spot in the conference just a little
over a month ago, now finds itself alone in sixth place, staggering
toward the season’s finishing line. But while a slide down
the standings is cause for apprehension, of more concern to the
Bruins is dropping games late in the season to Pac-10 opponents
whom they’re battling with for potential tournament
berths.
“There’s always a concern,” UCLA coach Kathy
Olivier said. “But what we really need to focus on is that
we’re still right there, that we can still get second place
in the Pac-10.”
Performances like the one the Bruins put forth on Saturday,
however, won’t bring UCLA (15-9, 9-6 Pac-10) any closer to
earning the conference’s silver medal.
Determined to prove that their 42-point showing against Arizona
State (17-7, 9-5) on Jan. 14 at Pauley Pavilion was simply an
aberration, the Bruins instead crumbled in the face of the Sun
Devils’ physical play once again.
Stymied by an aggressive man-to-man defense, UCLA was held
scoreless for the first five minutes of Saturday’s contest,
and trailed 21-5 with a little under five minutes left in the first
half. By that time, the outcome of the game was largely in hand for
the Sun Devils.
“The first five minutes were a tough five minutes,”
Olivier said. “They just came out and stopped us. They slap,
they hack, they swing their arms, and they stopped us from getting
into the flow offensively.
“There were 57 foul shots, and I don’t think there
were enough.”
The Sun Devils forced UCLA to run its offense through junior
Nikki Blue, and though the point guard is usually a reliable place
to turn to for production, it was the only place the Bruins could
turn on Saturday.
Blue finished with a season-high 32 points, but singlehandedly
constituted over 54 percent of UCLA’s scoring offense, a
number far too high for the Bruins’ liking.
“It’s not often I score a lot and we win,”
said Blue, who had 27 points in the second half. “When we
score evenly, we win.”
While the Bruins were largely dependent on the efforts of Blue
and junior Lisa Willis (13 points), Arizona State blanketed UCLA
with a much more diverse and balanced attack.
Kristen Kovesdy led the Sun Devils with 17 points, while not a
single player on Arizona State played more than 22 minutes.
For a Bruin team that is still without the services of Noelle
Quinn, who is not projected to return until the Pac-10 Tournament
at the earliest, UCLA knows it needs to find someone, preferably
multiple people, to step up and help share the load being carried
by Blue and Willis.
And with only three games remaining, two against the
Pac-10’s top-two teams Stanford and USC, Olivier believes it
will be the role players’ ability to deliver that will make
or break UCLA’s season.
“We need to make some changes,” Olivier said.
“But we get to come home, which is very
comforting.”