A ragged first half marked by turnovers and an excessive outside emphasis had the Utah women’s basketball team in danger of losing its second straight contest and dropping a game below the break-even mark Thursday night.
The second half, however, saw the Utes register sufficient enough improvement to score a hard-fought 58-46 victory over Pac-10 entrant Oregon State and move to 3-2 overall on the year.
It was a performance that left U coach Elaine Elliott unimpressed, but temporarily satisfied.
“We still have a lot to work on, but we were good enough to get the ‘W’ tonight,” Elliott said.
Utah used a 12-0 run?including 8 points from senior forward Lindsay Herbert?in the opening half to recover from a lethargic start and take a 17-10 lead, only to subsequently fall behind again after allowing the Beavers a 9 0 run of their own.
Stymied by OSU’s full-court pressure and subverted by their own infatuation with the 3-point stripe, the Utes went into the break tied at 25, having committed 9 turnovers and converted just 1-of-9 from long distance.
“Early on, we were just sloppy with our passes and they’re very quick,” Elliott said. “We tried to go over the top, and we found out you can’t do that against them, so that was something we had to adjust to.”
The Utes’ biggest adjustment, though, was pounding the ball into senior center Lauren Beckman, who came in averaging a team-best 18 points per game, but had only 2 field goal attempts in the game’s first 20 minutes.
With her teammates allowing her to post, and then feeding her the ball on a consistent basis, Beckman scored 9 of Utah’s first 12 points of the second half. She finished with 21 points (on 7-of-10 shooting) and 9 boards for the game.
“We needed to get her the ball,” Elliott said. “We needed her to get a basket. So we told her not to be passive and not to be a passer.”
Meanwhile, with their pivot player as the catalyst, the Utes went on a 12-0 run to take a 44-34 lead, as Oregon State missed 10 consecutive shots in the span and never recovered, shooting just 32.1 percent for the game and dropping to 2-3.
OSU’s Felicia Ragland, who had 10 points in the opening half and scored her team’s first two baskets of the latter period, went without another basket until she hit a 3-pointer with 2:23 to go. She finished with a team-high 20.
Utah now prepares for another Pac-10 foe this Saturday, as it will take on 3-1 UCLA and that league’s leading scorer, Michelle Greco (26.3 ppg).
“They’re very quick and very athletic,” Elliott said. “It’s going to be a difficult matchup.”