By Josh Green
After being on the road for nearly three weeks, the Arizona State women’s basketball team returned home and defeated Cal Poly 69-58 in the ASU Classic.
Led by junior Kimberly Brandon, the Lady Devils improved to 4-2 on the young season and advanced to the tournament title game, where they will face New Mexico.
Brandon filled the absence of senior forward Becca Tobin, who sat out with a tendon strain in her right foot, with 16 points and 15 rebounds, both team highs.
“I knew I had to pick it up because Becca is out, and she’s a big part of our team,” Brandon said after the game.
While Brandon had a great performance, head coach Charli Turner Thorne was less than thrilled with the team’s performance as a whole.
“This was our worst game of the year, by far,” she said.
ASU turned the ball over 25 times, mostly due to Tobin’s absence. The Lady Devils struggled against Cal Poly’s zone without their most mobile presence in the post.
ASU got off to a great start, taking a 15-2 lead just four minutes into the game, but Cal Poly responded, going on a 15-4 run to make it a 19-17 game with 8:12 left in the first half.
The Lady Devils closed the first half on a 16-2 run, however, taking a 35-19 lead into halftime.
The Mustangs trailed by as many as 18 in the second half but cut it down to six, 64-58, with 2:19 left in the game. Watson sealed it for ASU on the next possession with her only three-point basket of the game.
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Turner Thorne said she thinks Tobin will play tomorrow, but it’s still up in the air. We likely won’t know until game time.
You can listen to the ASU-New Mexico tournament final live right here on blazeradioonline.com, with coverage starting around 4:15 mountain time.
This entry was posted on Friday, December 3rd, 2010 at 11:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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