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.

“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.