Kalee Whipple and Morgan Warburton were going bound to take on most of the scoring brunt for the U women’s basketball team this year. Tuesday night, they took that to a new level.
Whipple and Warburton both put up career highs and the Utes got their second straight victory over a Pac-10 opponent, beating USC 87-77. The duo combined for 58 of Utah’s 87 points with Whipple putting up 31 points, 7 rebounds, and 4 assists on the night before fouling out. Warburton had 27 on the game, including a perfect 16-for-16 performance from the freethrow line and surpassed 1,500 career points in the process.
Warburton wasn’t the only Ute that found success at the charity stripe. Utah went 34-for-37 from the line as a team, and scored their last 16 points from the charity stripe. In fact, Utah’s last field goal came at the 5:28 mark in the second half.
Neither team was able to pull away much at all during the contest. Both teams traded baskets throughout the first half, and went into the locker rooms tied at 39 a piece. The second half was much of the same. Neither team was able to break away up until the 8:33 mark, with the score tied at 62. Utah then went on a 9-0 run, capped off by two baskets from Katie King. USC was able to draw within 3, but that’s when the free throws started coming, and Utah didn’t miss when it counted most.
The Utes defensive output was strong as usual. USC shot 31 percent from the field compared to the Utes 42 percent night. What was most impressive about Utah’s defensive efforts was their defense on the Trojan’s leading scorer Briana Gilbreath. Gilbreath came into the game averaging 12.5 points per game, but the freshman phenom had a rough go of it in the Huntsman Center. Gilbreath went 1-for-9 from the floor and finished with 6 points.
Utah, which has been plagued by turnovers the entire contest, only committed 12 for the game, compared to 19 assists, including a career high seven from freshman point guard Hannah Stephens.
The win gives Utah a chance to enter conference play above .500 with a win over Norfolk State on January 2nd. However, not only would Utah be going into the Mountain West season with a winning record, but they would be riding their longest winning steak of the season so far at 3 games, two of which came against the mighty Pac-10.