Colorado University Athletics
Colorado
13-16,6-12
Arizona State
26-4,15-3
After Loss At ASU, Buffs Look Ahead To Pac-12 Tourney
March 01, 2015 | Women's Basketball
TEMPE, Ariz. – It was a season of almost there for Colorado women's basketball, and it ended, as it often had, with a tough loss that was closer than the score indicated and more painful because of it.
Sunday afternoon, that loss came at No. 10 Arizona State, it came by the score of 59-46, and it came at the hands of Katie Hempen and Promise Amukamara.
Hempen led all scorers with 15 points. She buried the Buffs with three-second half 3-pointers. Amukamara scored 13, and late in the game she forced the ball inside and ratcheted up the tempo.
Colorado (13-16, 6-12 Pac-12).got 12 points, six assists and five rebounds from Lexy Kresl, who played her final regular-season game eight miles from her hometown of Paradise Valley. No other Buff scored in double figures. They shot nearly the same percentage as the Sun Devils — 42 percent to 43 percent — but Colorado committed 19 turnovers and Arizona State just nine.
"Their defense was on point tonight," Buffs coach Linda Lappe said. "Every time our player turns around they were right there; they get by one and there would be another one and so on."
That Sun Devils' defense, second in the Pac-12 in scoring, stifled Colorado early. Arizona State's full-court press trapped whoever was the target of Colorado's inbounds passes and kept the Buffs from initiating their half-court sets. Jasmine Sborov hit Colorado's first shot with a running put-back of a Jamee Swan miss, then the Buffs went five minutes without scoring.
"We let them speed us up," Kresl said. "Which hurt the flow of our offense so it was a little bit harder to get into it at times. And it's just difficult to kind of progress from there once you are already disrupted."
Colorado committed five turnovers in that stretch, and that which has plagued the Buffs all season continued to do so — they threw away inbounds passes and post feeds and got called for illegal screens. But Colorado's defense was equally stingy; Arizona State (26-4, 15-3) struggled from the paint and from beyond the arc, and the Sun Devils were able to turn their six offensive rebounds into only three second-chance points.
The Buffs held Arizona State four minutes without a point and used a 7-0 run to turn an 11-4 deficit into a tie game. Kresl and Lauren Huggins buried threes from NBA range, and Swan and Jen Reese got rare inside buckets. Colorado stayed level for the rest of the half and took its first lead when Huggins rattled in a trey in the final 10 seconds. But Elisha Davis raced back down the court, pulled up from the elbow, and drained a jumper at the buzzer. That put the Sun Devils up 22-21 and the Buffs never led again.
Colorado looked for its offense from the elbows early in the second half. The Buffs got their first bucket after the break when Haley Smith cut backdoor and scored off of Reese's feed. Arizona State guarded Colorado's bigs well, though — the Sun Devils forced Swan into foul trouble and limited Reese to only three shot attempts.
Amukamara pushed Arizona State ahead by pushing the tempo; she led several one-woman fast breaks, got to the rim with little trouble, and finished through contact once she was there. Her and-one over Kresl gave the Sun Devils what was then their biggest lead of the game.
"Everyone is trying hard," Kresl said. "There's full effort every time we step on the court. We just weren't as physically and mentally prepared tonight to handle the pressure."
Colorado looked to make another run as Kresl buried another 25-foot triple and Sborov nailed a tough turnaround jumper off of a baseline cut to narrow Arizona State's lead from 11 points to five. Then Hempen made back-to-back treys and the Buffs never threatened again. The Sun Devils' defense was too fast, too frenetic, its trapping too much.
"We didn't get anything easy tonight, thats for sure," Lappe said. "They make you work and they do that against every team. They make you work for every single shot that you get. Our offense sputtered tonight. We have a few days to get better and get back at it on Thursday."
Thursday brings USC in the first round of the Pac-12 Tournament in Seattle, with the Buffs the No. 9 seed and facing the No. 8 seeded Trojans (7 p.m., MST). That is the only game that Colorado is still guaranteed to play. It could be the ignominious end of a languid year, or it could start a miraculous run. Or it could simply prolong the Buffs' season for one more day.
Colorado has lost twice already to the Trojans, but they're ready for another shot.
"I think that is going to be a good one for us," Kresl said. "We deserve another crack at them."
They've got it. Thursday, the season begins anew.Â
