ASU Basketball: How the Sun Devils lost the interior battle

Despite not surrendering a three-point shot, ASU basketball was overmatched inside by the duo of Michaela Onyenwhere and Japreece Dean.

Not many basketball teams can win a game without making a single three-point shot.

But for the UCLA Bruins, the game plan was to get the ball into the paint and wear down the Arizona State defense as often as possible.

And that they successfully did.

Behind a dominant post performance, the fourth-seeded Bruins pulled past the fifth-seeded Arizona State Sun Devils 73-69 in the semifinals of the 2019 Pac-12 Women’s Basketball Tournament.

While UCLA attempted only four three-point shots, it managed to convert 52 percent (26-for-50) of its two-point field goals. Overall, the Bruins recorded 40 points in the paint.

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And while ASU did its best to keep up with UCLA it was evident early, the Bruins had the edge in the paint.

“We got off to a slow start,” ASU head coach Charli Turner Thorne said. “Really, our defense. We weren’t locked in.”

UCLA scored 20 of their first 35 points from inside, while collecting 17 rebounds by the end of the first half. Although ASU would eventually take back the rebounding margin, it continued to surrender point after point in the paint.

But the attack wasn’t limited to only the bigs for the Bruins.

Five-foot-6 point guard Japreece Dean contributed a game-high 24 points with 18 of her points coming from the interior. Dean made a habit of penetrating through the ASU interior to either attack the rim or dish it to an open teammate.

One of those teammates being sophomore Michaela Onyenwere, who had a double-double (20 points-10 rebounds) for Bruins. Onyenwere finished 7-for-8 from the field, while also making six of her eight trips to the free throw line.

And although UCLA dominated in the first, ASU made the necessary adjustments to shore up the paint after the slow half.

“I think we all made a better effort,” center Charnea Johnson-Chapman said. “We played harder and more physical in the post. We have to move our feet, we can’t just play behind.”

The Sun Devils came out strong, limiting the Bruins to only 16 points in the quarter.

A key being the lack of inside penetration from UCLA, which allowed ASU to crawl back into the contest.

But midway through the fourth, it seemed like the ASU defense had run out of gas. The Bruins held off a late push by the Sun Devils to prevail 73-69.

The deciding factor being the dominance inside the paint from UCLA.

“Well, usually we’re really good at that, and that was our game plan: don’t give them lay-ups,” Turner Thorne said. “So we know what we needed to do, we just didn’t do it.”

All quotes in this article were obtained firsthand by Devils in Detail unless otherwise noted.