Less than a day after returning from its weekend trip to Colorado and Utah, about half of the women’s basketball team went to coach Cori Close’s house Monday night to watch more basketball.
It was a nationally televised matchup between the team’s next opponent, No. 8 Arizona State (18-4, 9-1 Pac-12) and No. 9 Oregon State (18-3, 10-1), the Pac-12’s top two teams.
The Sun Devils were on a 15-game winning streak, and many thought they would carry that momentum through their matchup against the Oregon State Beavers and into their upcoming Friday matchup with No. 14 UCLA (16-5, 8-2) in Tempe, Arizona.
What happened was the opposite, as the Sun Devils took a 23-point pounding for their first conference loss of the year.
“I think Arizona State played their worst game of the year,” Close said. “They’re very, very good, I didn’t think they played well. They almost looked like they played tight or maybe over-thought it.”
After starting out 3-3, the Sun Devils mowed their way through the rest of the nonconference schedule and the first half of Pac-12 play. The Oregon State game was an embarrassing performance for a team that has been doing the embarrassing all season, and probably not one it will want to repeat.
“They’re going to come at us swinging,” said sophomore guard Kelli Hayes. “I know their practice this week is probably going to be really intense, so they’re going to bring it to us.”
If the Sun Devils are angry about their loss to the Beavers, it will likely work naturally into their style of play. They are known as a high-intensity team that will suffocate the opposing offense from start to finish. It’s a type of play that the Bruins generally bring to the table, rather than have to match up against.
“They pressure everywhere. They don’t care what type of team you are,” said freshman guard Kennedy Burke. “We just have to work extra hard, we just have to give more effort into the game.”
If any team could match up with the ASU defense, which is ranked second in the Pac-12, it would be the team with the conference’s best offense, UCLA. The Bruins’ skilled guard-play and athleticism have enabled them to score consistently on almost every team they’ve played, regardless of their opponent’s emotional mindset.
“I think (quickness and athleticism) is more to our strength than it is to theirs,” Close said. “We gotta play athletic, that’s who we are, we gotta play at a high tempo, that’s who we are, we gotta rebound, that’s who we are.”
UCLA, for its part, doesn’t seem to have anything to be mad about. It is on a five-game winning streak, was just selected as a top-10 team by the NCAA selection committee, and has its point guard coming back from an injury that didn’t turn out nearly as bad as some feared.
It will be a game the conference’s other contenders like Washington and Stanford will be watching. They will be expecting a good, high-intensity game, as many Pac-12 games have been this season.
But not all of them are. Sometimes they just end in embarrassment.