Sun Devils cool off Huskies

  • By Mike Allende / Herald Writer
  • Saturday, January 28, 2006 9:00pm
  • Sports

SEATTLE – The Washington women’s basketball team had executed so well recently that it was easy to believe that the Huskies’ offensive woes were behind them. But Saturday proved that that isn’t the case.

Jennifer Buchanan / The Herald

UWs Emily Florence (4) tries to drive by Arizona States Kirsten Thompson (left) and YoVanna Rosenthal (right).

Washington shot just 32.2 percent, its lowest percentage since Dec. 12 when it shot 29.9 percent against Eastern Washington, and had 11 second-half turnovers in losing to No. 19 Arizona State 67-61 at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.

The win was the first for ASU (7-4 Pacific-10 Conference, 16-5 overall) in Seattle since the 1995-96 season and moved the Sun Devils into a tie with Washington for third place in the conference.

The win was especially big for ASU and the loss especially hard for the Huskies (7-4, 14-6), who lost to ASU for the second time this season. Stanford and USC both lost Friday, and a victory over Arizona State would have put Washington at least in sole possession of second place, and possibly in a three-way tie for first if the Trojans defeat the Cardinal today.

“We have to control what we can control and today we didn’t do that,” Washington coach June Daugherty said. “It’s a tough one to swallow, no doubt. But it’s how we move forward, that’s what’s important.”

Sun Devils coach Charli Turner-Thorne, a graduate assistant at Washington from 1988-90 who won for the first time at Hec Ed, called the win “humongous.”

“Big, big, big,” Turner-Thorne said. “It gives us life in terms of being in the top echelon of teams, which in the first round (of league play) was looking iffy. We approached this game as being for the Pac-10 championship.”

Washington started so well that it seemed it would continue its recent run of hot offense. The Huskies made eight of their first 13 shots in the first 10 minutes. Washington then missed 35 of 46 the rest of the way.

“They keep great pressure on the basketball,” Daugherty said. “At the same time, it’s not something we haven’t seen before. To me, it was more our lack of execution than what ASU was doing.”

“I yelled at my team to start playing defense,” Turner-Thorne said. “We weren’t digging in at all. We weren’t taking anything away, we weren’t forcing the action. We were calling out their plays and then watching them run them.”

Still, despite the poor offense, Washington was always in the game, and led 43-42 on a 3-pointer by Kristen O’Neill with 14:11 to play.

YoVanna Rosenthall, a senior guard who had scored just 30 points all season, sank a 3-pointer from the top of the key to give ASU a 57-53 with 5:42 to go, but Washington took a 58-57 lead on a Breanne Watson layup with 3:38 left. But from that point Arizona State scored the next 12 points, including six by senior reserve Amy Denson, as the Sun Devils walked away with the road win. Arizona State was playing its fourth game in a row on the road and improved to 5-4 away from Tempe.

“I’m really proud of our team for staying with things,” Turner-Thorne said. “We turned the ball over a lot. It would have been easy, given our road history, to let up and not stay aggressive. This is going to be huge for our team. We showed a lot of toughness.”

Denson finished with 18 points on 8-for-10 shooting and Emily Westerberg scored 10 points for Arizona State, which shot 51 percent and outrebounded the Huskies 39-29 to survive 24 turnovers.

O’Neill had 15 points, Watson and Cameo Hicks scored 12 and Andrea Plouffe scored 10 for the Huskies, but the quartet shot a combined 14-for-42. Daugherty said the future will tell if this game was a step back for her team.

“It depends on how we respond,” Daugherty said. “If we’re going to learn from it and be disappointed in our lack of execution on both ends of the floor, and come into the gym the next practice and get after it, then it will not be a step back. If we accept it and just try to move on, then it will be.”

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