In every game that Washington’s Kelsey Plum has played this season, she has forced her opponent to react to her. Sometimes it’s in the fourth quarter, sometimes it’s earlier. Against the Bruins on Sunday morning, it was much earlier, and it almost proved too much for the Bruins to react to.
During an eventual 63-59 UCLA win, Plum pounced on the No. 14 Bruins (19-6, 11-3 Pac-12) early, scoring 17 points in the first quarter to give the Huskies (17-8, 8-6) a 26-9 lead to start the game. It was as close to a knock-out punch that Washington could have delivered.
“I was just trying to be aggressive, and the defense kind of packed in so I knew I had to hit some jumpers,” Plum said. “My teammates set great screens, and I got some good looks.”
The 17-point lead was the largest margin the Bruins have overcome in the last 10 years, but the Bruins have been battling back from big leads all season. Plum eventually started looking human and the Bruins rallied.
“It was a team thing. It wasn’t one matchup,” said coach Cori Close. “We played 90 percent zone in the second half and you’re never going to stop Kelsey Plum by yourself, it’s just never going to happen.”
The Bruins held Plum to four-for-17 shooting for the rest of the game and continued to chip away. Outside of Plum and senior forward Talia Walton, the Huskies couldn’t find scoring, only getting eight points from the rest of the team.
The Bruins on the other hand, found role players coming up in important spots. Freshman guard Kennedy Burke came off the bench to score five straight points in the middle of the fourth quarter while sophomore forward Lajahna Drummer had eight rebounds off the bench. It eventually became too much for a Washington team whose starters sat for a combined 10 minutes.
“(The opponent’s fatigue) is something that we feed off of,” said sophomore forward Monique Billings. “If we see that the other team is not getting back in transition, we just talk to each other like, ‘We gotta keep running. They’re tired,’ and that’s something that we play off of.”
Despite the Huskies’ lack of scoring and depth, they were still in the game until the very end. Down by two with 7 seconds left, the Huskies got the ball to Plum, who drove hard to the basket, but just didn’t have enough left. The ball rolled out of the rim and would eventually get to Plum’s long time rival, sophomore guard Jordin Canada. Canada hit two free throws to ice the game, finishing with 16 points and nine assists.
The win was the Bruins’ first against Washington this season, after falling by eight points in January. It was a critical win for the Bruins, who are still fighting for a conference title and have a tough, four-game stretch to end the season. Two of those games are against No. 8 Arizona State and No. 9 Oregon State, and one is against Oregon, which has been on a recent tear. Luckily for UCLA, Plum isn’t on any of those teams. It was difficult enough the first two times.