Lefty Specialist
SAN JOSE, Calif. – When the momentum swung against the Oregon women’s basketball team Sunday, everything it had done so well in the first 35 minutes of the game suddenly went out the window.
The fact that Arizona State missed 15 of its first 16 shots in the second half became irrelevant.
The eight-point lead the Ducks held
with 13:19 left in the second half was just a happy memory.
Oregon’s continued presence in the Pacific-10 Conference Women’s Tournament became a five-minute game of “hang on.”
So when Arizona State’s Aubree Johnson hit a right-handed, eight-foot floater from behind the backboard to give the Sun Devils a 49-47 lead with 47 seconds left in the game, “hang on” was no longer good enough.
Oregon knew it. Arizona State knew it.
Actually, Arizona State knew it before Johnson’s floater. The Sun Devils had called a
30-second timeout with just over a minute to go and, according to Arizona State forward Emily Westerberg, that’s when they knew.
“We came out of our timeout and (head coach Charli Turner Thorne) said, ‘We’re going to win,’” Westerberg said. “It’s that confidence that she has in us, and at that moment, we realized we weren’t going to let this slip out of our hands.”
Unfortunately, Oregon senior Cathrine Kraayeveld’s jumper with 5:07 left marked the final field goal the Ducks would make. In the last five minutes, the Ducks committed five turnovers and scored only two points on a pair of free throws by freshman Kristen Forristall.
“They’re really aggressive,” Oregon senior Andrea Bills said. “We handled it well until there was five minutes left, and then we started making mental mistakes. We had a few turnovers that really hurt us, and we have to play up to and past their intensity throughout the whole game.”
There were many reasons why Oregon lost.
It wasn’t the Ducks’ 17-1 record (until
Sunday) when leading at halftime.
It wasn’t the karma of being undefeated in their white uniforms.
Part of it was the fact that Oregon connected on a season low 1 of 8 from three-point range.
Another part was the fact that the Ducks were outrebounded 39-32 and gave up seven more offensive rebounds.
Mainly, it was one of those games where no matter what you try and do to get momentum back, the shots that were falling start missing, the turnovers that weren’t happening start happening, and a “victory” could still occur if a team breaks out the books and an abacus and learns.
“That’s what tournament basketball is all about,” Oregon head coach Bev Smith said. “It’s staying tight, staying focused and looking after the ball at the end of the game. It’s a tough loss because our team really competed well. I think we learned a lot from this game and it will help us in the postseason.”
The good news is the Ducks are likely to be in the NCAA Tournament, and what they learn from this loss, they can apply to wherever the selection committee puts them.
“We still have to stay in it at the end of the game and stay aggressive,” Kraayeveld said.
Although the Ducks did not shoot the ball well this weekend, they did play great defense in both games.
Oregon also got great play from their posts, including Kraayeveld and Bills, and did a great job rebounding the ball.
All of them are solid points to think about while gearing up for
the NCAAs.
Sunday’s loss wasn’t the end of a great season for the Ducks; instead it was just another lesson for later on this March.
