Connor Roche
Colorado State University guard Brooke Carlson (2) drives the lane during CSU's game versus University of San Diego at Moby Arena Nov. 17. CSU won 71-44.
Some games don’t start the best but finish great.
After leading by only two points at the end of the first quarter, Colorado State women’s basketball rallied to beat San Diego 71-44 in Moby Arena Monday.
The Rams started out slow but turned a corner in the second quarter to lead them to their third win this season by over 16 points. The Rams outscored USD 16-4 in the second quarter, giving them a 30-16 halftime lead, and they never looked back.
Though this was ultimately a lopsided win for the Rams, head coach Ryun Williams saw the night as a key building block for the many games to come this season.
“This is big girl basketball,” Williams said. “You can’t just play well, you know, in a big game; they’re all big. And so that was kind of the message is we’ve got a standard at which we want to play at, and we surely didn’t do that consistently tonight.”
The Rams came out on fire in the second half, going on a 9-0 scoring run shortly after the start of the third quarter and finished the third quarter shooting 78% from the field. That was a massive improvement from the first half, where they shot only 42% from the field
And Williams attributed the early lull to the mindset in the first half.
“They’re wonderful kids, but sometimes we get in our feelings a little bit,” Williams said. “Throughout that locker room, (the feeling) was just a little too soggy cereal for me, you know? I didn’t like it whatsoever.”
While every aspect of the game wasn’t as pretty as they wanted it to be, the Rams showed great improvement in many aspects of tonight’s game, and one of the main strong points was 3-point shooting.
Going into Monday’s game, the Rams were shooting only 23.6% from three point range. They nearly doubled that against USD, shooting 45.8%, and the 3-point production was led by McKenna Murphy off the bench. Murphy said she embraces her role of being the sharpshooter off the bench and Monday proved to be a key factor in the statement win.
“That’s what I practice,” Murphy Said. “Getting in the gym and shooting 3’s. So yeah, thanks to the teammates for finding me to get me open and allow me to make them.”
Entering Monday’s game, Murphy was averaging six points per game, but she doubled that total with 12 points, all of which came from three pointers.
The second half increase in production did not just come from 3-pointers, though. One of the main reasons the Rams came away with their 27-point win was their relentless defensive effort. Holding USD to only 44 points, the Rams’ stellar defense was led by Hannah Ronsiek, where she totaled 10 defensive rebounds and three steals.
“This team was a dribble penetration team rather than shooting it,” Ronsiek said. “So, it gave me a lot of opportunities to be in position to get rebounds, or steals, deflections, so I just think it came with the (scouting) and being prepared.”
Ronsiek was not only a defensive force in tonight’s game but has been all season, and the Rams look to build around this moving forward.
“You know (Ronsiek) is our anchor; she is our rock defensively.” Williams said. “And you know, when she is not in there, doing what she does best, you know, we’re a pretty average defensive team to be honest with you. But that was a good performance.”
As the Rams move to 4-0 on the season, they look to keep the momentum they have built and look at every game as a big game. And though this game was not perfect, it was a showing of determination and teamwork by CSU to turn things around after a rocky start.
“So I mean, I definitely think that this game was really important,” Murphy said. “In the first half, it wasn’t the prettiest. But we did come out in the second half and (did) what we needed to do.”
Reach Luke German at sports@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegianSpts.
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