With the arrival of the latter part of its season and important Mountain West matchups beginning to heat up, the CSU women’s basketball team has been ready to start putting more tallies in its win column.
The Rams did just that on Wednesday night when conference rival Nevada traveled to Moby before walking away wearing its seventh straight loss, falling to CSU 59-50.
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“No coach likes to watch that,” Nevada coach Jane Albright said. “You want your teams to execute, but their defense is very good. We had a hard trouble finding shooters.”
The first 10 minutes of the game were evenly matched, experiencing the lead change seven different times. CSU was then able to finish the half on a 15-4 run to take a nine point lead into the locker room at halftime.
The Rams’ early success came from being able to defend the three starting guards for the Wolf Pack, who have been their key scorers all season.
“We didn’t let them get out and go. Those guards, they’ve got a different gear, I think we kept them contained and corralled most of the night,” CSU coach Ryun Williams said. “They couldn’t get into attack mode, which when they get there, they’re pretty darn good.”
Although it never regained the lead after the first half, Nevada put out a second half surge, going on a 10-0 run to pull back within two possessions with three minutes left to play.
“I think in the first half we played more as a team, they applied more pressure the second half and that’s when we started to fall apart as a team,” senior forward Meghan Heimstra said.
Despite the late effort, CSU was able to match Nevada’s 26 second half points to secure its nine point lead when the final buzzer went off.
“Coach calmed us down and said ‘Let’s go, we’re not losing this game, we’re protecting Moby,’” junior forward Sam Martin said.
CSU improves to 7-14, 2-5 MW as Nevada’s losing streak lives on, putting it at 6-15, 1-6 MW.
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The Rams will have the weekend off before playing a red hot San Diego State (15-5) next Wednesday on the road.
“We’ll practice Friday and Saturday and we’ll bust them up and get some work done. Then get ready for San Diego State,” Williams said. “If we continue to grow offensively, I think we can be a tough team to beat.”
Women’s Basketball Beat Reporter Quentin Sickafoose can be reached at sport@collegian.com.
