The Utah women’s basketball team closed the book on the 2015-16 regular season Saturday afternoon the same way it opened it — with a win. The Utes handed Washington State a loss on its home floor, and on senior night, just as Stanford did to Utah last week.
A second-half surge, and a combined 56 points from Utah point guard Dani Rodriguez and forward Paige Crozon sealed the 75-69 victory to close the season.
“That was a big win for us,” Crozon said following Saturday’s victory. “We needed that to get our confidence back going into the postseason.”
The confidence-boosting win for Utah wasn’t all roses to begin with. Washington State jumped out on the Utes early, earning an eight-point lead heading into the second quarter and building on that to amass a 12-point lead at halftime.
But the Utes hung tough, as they’ve done all year long. In the final regular season game of her career, Rodriguez shouldered the load for Utah to give the team a chance. Heading into halftime, Rodriguez had amassed 18 points and scored seven of Utah’s nine first-half field goals. Despite trailing the Cougars 38-26 at the break, Utah refused to relent in the second half.
“I think we kind of snapped out of it,” Rodriguez said of her team’s turnaround in the second half. “Coach [Roberts] just said they’ve been playing with more energy than us and we just need to come out and step our energy up and play like we want to win.”
It was a game Utah certainly wanted to win, having dropped four of its last five ball games before Saturday, and in the second half of play, the Utes showed that will to win.
After a quiet first half, Crozon stepped up big in the second, shouldering the scoring load with Rodriguez. To open the third period of play, Utah cobbled together an 18-6 run to tie up the game, 44-44. Crozon doubled her first half scoring output of five points with 10 in the third period, alone.
Heading into the final period of play, Utah owned a 53-52 edge over the Cougars and Crozon and Rodriguez had combined for 38 points.
But the Utah wrecking crew wasn’t finished yet. As both teams went tit for tat in the final period of play, Rodriguez and Crozon scored all but two of Utah’s field goals in the quarter and put together a 9-2 run in the final three minutes of play to seal the victory. The two finished with respective career-highs with 28 points apiece.
“It was a very surreal and exciting experience,” Crozon laughed of her and Rodriguez’ 56-point performance. “It was really special to share a career-high with one of my greatest friends and teammates.”
With its win Saturday, Utah closes the season with its best record since 2012-13. The Utes went 16-13 on the year, 8-10 in conference play after coming in dead last in the Pac-12 last year with just three conference wins all year.
The Pac-12 released the official bracket of this year’s tournament Sunday afternoon, pitting Utah against Cal in the first round. Utah owned the season sweep of Cal this year, but the Utes are less concerned about who they’ll face in the first round than with how they’ll face them.
“Every team in the Pac-12 is very talented and talented in different ways,” Crozon said. “Going into next week we just need to focus on ourselves and if we can play our game and do the things that we’re good at we can be successful. When we’ve been good this season we’ve been playing Utah basketball.”
Catch the Utes on Pac-12 Networks as they face Cal at 12:30 p.m. MST this Thursday for the first round of the 2016 Pac-12 tournament.
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