SEATTLE — June Daugherty wasn’t admitting it late Sunday afternoon, but there may well have been a day when the current Washington State University women’s basketball coach envisioned Kristi Kingma having a day like this in a University of Washington uniform.
On Sunday, it became Daughe
rty’s nightmare.
The former UW women’s basketball coach could only watch helplessly as Kingma almost single-handedly buried her Cougars 64-52 in front of 5,295 fans at Hec Edmundson Pavilion. Kingma scored 29 points, hitting 5 of 9 shots from 3-point range, as UW beat WSU for the 31st consecutive time.
“She was on fire,” UW senior Sarah Morton said of Kingma, who made a career-high 11 field goals on 20 attempts Sunday. “It was fun. It was real fun.”
Not for WSU’s Daugherty. The former Huskies coach, who earned a UW commitment from Kingma during her sophomore year at Jackson High School but never got to coach her, was on the other side of the stellar performance on this day.
“We let Kingma get going at the end of the first half,” Daugherty said, “and that’s a recipe for disaster.”
Kingma did most of her serious damage while scoring 15 points during a 26-9 run to close out the first half, but her most important points came on a pair of rally-killing shots down the stretch. A 3-pointer with 3:19 remaining put a stop to a WSU 13-0 run, while a steal-and-layup 86 seconds later gave UW (8-10 overall, 3-6 in the Pac-10) a nine-point lead and accounted for the final dagger in the Cougars’ pelt.
In three previous meetings with WSU — she missed one of the last year’s games because of a concussion — Kingma had 24 total points on 6-of-21 shooting. She picked a good time to have a breakout game in the rivalry, considering the fact that her teammates shot a combined 6-of-35 on Sunday.
“It’s just so great to go out and get a win,” the junior guard said afterward. “Coach (Tia Jackson) challenged me after the Arizona trip (last weekend). … She challenged me, and I think I rose to the occasion.”
Sunday didn’t look like it was shaping up to be a classic Kingma shooting performance when she clanged three consecutive free throws after getting fouled on a 3-point try midway through the first half. But Kingma went to the line 90 seconds later, nailed a pair of free throws, then hit five consecutive field goals to blow the doors open on a close game.
Kingma scored 15 points, including three 3-pointers in a span of less than 2½ minutes, to lead a 26-9 that closed out the first half. While she eventually went cold by missing an open 3 at the buzzer, Kingma finished with 17 first-half points for a 38-22 lead.
Daugherty got so fed up — not with Kingma but with the officiating — that she was called for a technical foul with 11 seconds left in the half and had to be restrained from one of the game officials as she walked across the court at halftime.
Kingma said the Huskies tried a variety of offenses against WSU’s 3-2 zone before finding success with a high-post-screen attack midway through the first half.
“It seems like the ball found my hands more often than not,” she said of her first-half performance, “and I was able to knock down those shots.”
UW’s Jackson said the Huskies weren’t necessarily running plays for Kingma against the zone defense but that the other players were making things happen around her.
“There was no magic play,” Jackson said. “They’re magic players, and they got the ball where it needed to be.”
The first 10 minutes of the game showed two scrappy teams fighting for state bragging rights, and it looked like the rivalry might be in store for a classic battle. After UW jumped out to an 8-2 lead, the Cougars turned their game up a notch and rallied to take a 13-12 lead with 10:26 remaining.
But Kingma’s two free throws started a 10-0 run that also included a near scrap when UW junior Charmaine Barlow got tangled up with WSU’s Ireti Amojo while battling for a loose ball. Cougars point guard April Cook, all 5-foot-8 of her, tried to come to Amojo’s aid but got chest-bumped out of the way by 6-4 UW bruiser Regina Rogers.
The Huskies continued to bully the Cougars over the next 20 minutes of play, pulling out to a lead as big as 18 points before WSU showed a little fight down the stretch.
After falling behind 51-33, the Cougars (5-16, 3-6) scored 13 unanswered points to pull within five with 4:40 remaining.
But Kingma answered again with an open 3-pointer from the wing, then she added the layup with 1:53 remaining to extend the rivalry streak to 31.
UW forced a season-high 27 turnovers in the game to help offset a 17-for-55 shooting performance that included several missed layups. The Huskies were 7 of 15 from the 3-point line, including 5 of 9 from Kingma.
Daugherty wasn’t necessarily in the mood to talk about her recruitment of Kingma afterward, but she did give credit where it was due.
“We didn’t have an answer today,” the WSU coach said late Sunday afternoon.
Through it all, Kingma has maintained respect for the coach who first recruited her to UW. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t out to set Daugherty’s Cougars back in Sunday’s installment of the cross-state rivalry.
“A win’s a win, but this rivalry is so huge,” Kingma said. “… The fan support, the whole Apple Cup rivalry and the school behind it, it just makes it that much more sweet to get a win.”
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