Another home game, another loss
The women's basketball team drops its fifth straight home game in a
67-61 loss to Tulsa on Saturday
By NATHAN HATHAWAY
Forget where the heart is; at this point, the Fresno State women’s
basketball team would just love for home to be where the wins are.
The Bulldogs lost their fifth straight game at home, dropping to 11-6
(3-5 Western Athletic Confe-rence) and 4-5 at the Save Mart Center.
Jasmine Plummer and the Bulldogs faltered in the second half against
Tulsa and lost 67-61. Plummer, in her first start of the season,
had 10 points and six steals. Photo by Joseph Hollak |
“I’m obviously very disappointed,” coach Stacy Johnson-Klein
said. “And I know I’m getting to sound like a broken record
with that.”
On paper, the Bulldogs dominated the Golden Hurricane (13-4, 5-2 WAC).
Fresno State outrebounded Tulsa 46-41, forced 29 turnovers and took 31
more shots than the Hurricane.
But, unfortunately for Fresno State, basketball isn’t played on
paper.
“Anytime you create that [number] of turnovers, along with 31 more
shots,” Johnson-Klein said, “I would call you crazy if you
told me a team lost the game, knowing those statistics. But we did and
we just have to, again, go back to the drawing board.”
The difference, however, was in the shooting percentages.
Fresno State took 76 shots but made only 22 (29 percent) while Tulsa shot
53 percent (24 of 45).
“We took more (shots); we have to make more,” said senior
forward Aritta Lane, who led the Bulldogs with18 points and 13 rebounds.
“When you take more, you should be making more. That’s not
happening for us. We need to make them.”
The Bulldogs came out as flat as they have all season and were behind
35-12 after 13 minutes.
“I think we were just so composed with the ball,” Tulsa coach
Kathy McConnell-Miller said. “I think we pushed it. We ran on them,
and people don’t typically do that to them. We deflated them in
that regard.”
Through the first 10 and a half minutes of the game, Fresno State was
outscored 20-2 in the paint and committed six turnovers.
“They were rebounding and our transition defense was slacking,”
Lane said. “All those points were off transition, and if they were
in a half-court set, they made their shots. They’re good at their
strength.
They’re good at the half-court game, and they took advantage of
what we were lacking early in the game.”
But for the second game in a row, the Bulldogs turned it on late in the
first half and put together an impressive run.
Fresno State put together a 30-8 run that spanned the two halves and saw
the Bulldogs pull within one point of Tulsa at 43-42.
The Bulldogs’ stifling press sparked the run, during which Fresno
State forced Tulsa into committing 20 turnovers. All but two of the Golden
Hurricane’s points during the stretch came from the free-throw line.
“I’m going to have nightmares about that press,” said
Tulsa’s Jillian Robbins, who had 15 points and 15 rebounds. “Once
they put that press on, it was unbelievable. We knew about it. We’d
heard about it.
Coach warned us about it. But you can warn us all you want to, but till
it hits, there’s no way you can handle it. It was like bees swarming.
That trap was lethal.”
In an attempt to break the Bulldogs’ current streak and “just
to shake ’em up a little bit,” Johnson-Klein sent out her
third different starting lineup of the season, starting Lane, Amy Parrish,
Tierre Wilson, Jasmine Plummer and Chantella Perera. With Wilson getting
the start, it was the first time this season a Fresno State starting lineup
didn’t feature Mirenda Swearengin as the point guard.
“I was trying to do something to shake up the lineup. Sometimes
it helps,” Johnson-Klein said. “I think it did. I think it
fired up Mirenda Swearengin a little bit.”
Swearengin was second on the team with 13 points, providing all of the
Bulldogs’ bench scoring in the game and single-handedly outscoring
the Tulsa bench.
Parrish scored 11 for the Bulldogs, and Plummer, in her first start of
the season, had 10 points and nine rebounds.
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