Washington State (5-9, 1-2) knew they needed to bring their “A” game Friday evening to earn a victory over the No. l4 UCLA Bruins (12-2, 3-0) jn the newly renovated Pauley Pavilion in Westwood, CA.
Friday night wasn’t the night for WSU women’s basketball, failing to make the grade losing to UCLA by a final score of 78-52.
Coach June Daughtery watched her team play pretty well in the first half.
The Cougs jumped out to an early lead 8-2 advantage after junior Brandi Thomas made a couple of nice buckets. It was a start to the game which defined much of the play by both teams in the first half. WSU and UCLA traded runs and buckets over the first 20-minutes to a score of 35-31 in favor of the home team at intermission.
Whatever the Cougars did at halftime in preparation for a run down the stretch, the results proved disastrous offensively. When the final buzzer sounded, Washington State converted only 5 of 21 attempts from the floor in the second half. UCLA put 31-points up on the scoreboard because of some sloppy play by the Cougs who turned the ball over 19 times.
This game was decided after the Bruins reeled off a 20-3 run fueled by tenacious defense and a smothering full court press.
An outstanding offensive game by sophomore Tia Presley was wasted. The Spokane native went 7 for 10 from the floor totaling a team leading 16 points. The leading rebounder, with 5, was freshman Lia Galdeira who added 11 points as the only other Cougar player to reach double-digits.
Washington State will try to even their conference road record 2pm Sunday afternoon when the take on USC at Galen Center in Los Angeles. The game will be streamed online at Pac-12.com or you can tune in on radio to hear Steve Grubbs call the play-by-play on the Washington State IMG Sports Network affiliates.