Arizona State Surprises UCLA

UCLA’s No. 19-ranked women’s basketball team has won this season while not always playing its best. But there was no way the Bruins could get away with playing as poorly as they did Friday and expect their luck to hold out.

It didn’t. Arizona State (12-4 overall, 4-2 in the Pacific 10 Conference) performed only marginally better than the Bruins Friday, but the Sun Devils stuck to their plan and came away with a 44-42 victory before 904 at Pauley Pavilion.

“It was the way we scripted it,” said Coach Charli Turner Thorne, who mapped out an aggressive 2-3 zone defense to frustrate the UCLA shooters and a slowdown offense to prevent the Bruins from getting into a running game.

“UCLA’s just too good in the transition game at home to go there with them. This was exactly what we prepared for -- make it a one-possession game, take away 50% of their offense. ... In their defense, we have not played very much zone this year. So if they were looking at game film, it was less than 10%.”

The victory was Turner Thorne’s 135th, making her the all-time leader among Arizona State women’s basketball coaches.

The loss ended a five-game winning streak overall for UCLA (11-4, 5-1) and a 10-game winning streak at home. It also dropped the Bruins into a three-way tie for first place in the Pac-10 with Stanford and USC.

Not much went the Bruins’ way. They made only 12 of 52 shots overall (23.1%), and they were four for 21 on three-point shots.

The 42 points tied the team record for their fewest points in a game (done previously against Utah in 2000 and Georgia in 1984). The combined 86 points by both teams were the fewest in UCLA women’s basketball history, dating to 1974.

“We probably had one of our worst performances, and we still had a shot to win the game,” UCLA Coach Kathy Olivier said. “You’re not going to see this happen again.”

Emily Westerberg led Arizona with 11 points.

Nikki Blue, who led UCLA with 12 points, scored with 21.7 seconds left to put UCLA within two, at 44-42. The Bruins got another chance after the Sun Devils’ Kylan Loney missed two free throws with nine seconds left, but Blue missed a layup to tie. The teams fought for the rebound, and UCLA was awarded possession, but its inbounds pass was intercepted with 0.3 of a second left.

-- Mike Terry

*

USC 67, Arizona 54 -- Eshaya Murphy scored 18 points and grabbed nine rebounds to lead the Trojans (11-4, 5-1), who moved into a tie for first in the Pac-10 with the victory at the Sports Arena. Arizona led, 26-25, at halftime but shot only 28% from the field in the second half. The Wildcats (11-5, 3-3) were led by Shawntinice Polk’s 18 points. USC outrebounded Arizona, 44-34.

*

In other top 25 women’s games:

Monique Currie’s 23 points led No. 1 Duke over Virginia, 87-65, at Charlottesville, Va. ... No. 9 North Carolina rallied from an 11-point, second-half deficit to get by North Carolina State, 77-75, at Raleigh, N.C., and No. 22 DePaul routed East Carolina, 99-58, at Chicago.

From Associated Press