tough match to lose after a strong first half
The Women travelled to Fort Collins this past Sunday to face off against the Colorado State Rams looking to make things right after a tough trip to the Virgin Islands.
Things started off well as the Bulldogs led 19-11 after the first quarter with Allie Turner and Maud Huijbens dropping 6 along with Claire O’Connor dropping 5. In an interesting change of routine, Coach Fortier was pretty deep into her bench this early in the game with 9 players seeing some action this period.
While Yvonne Ejim only had 1 point in the first ten minutes, she exploded in the second with 10 points while the defense kept the Rams clamped, which propelled the Zags to a 20 point lead at the intermission. At this point, Maud had already dropped a double-double with her 10 points and 10 rebounds, Allie was perfect from the field with 8 points and 6 rebounds, and Claire was also lights out with her 9 points on 4-4 shooting.
However, this is when the fun stopped as the wheels basically fell off after the second half kicked off. In the third quarter, the Zags went on multiple scoring droughts and finished the period with just 9 points while coughing up 5 turnovers and committing 8 fouls. Only Allie Turner scored from the field in live play, but she also shot 2-8 from the field this quarter. Meanwhile, the Rams were storming back and had cut the previous 20 point lead to just 5 as they exploded for a 24 point quarter.
The fourth quarter didn’t start off to dissimilarly as the Bulldogs only scored 3 points in the first three minutes and allowed the Rams to tie it up before the media timeout. The Zags would go on a mini run to re-establish the lead heading into the midway point of the period, but couldn’t maintain their success as Colorado State kept chipping away.
Things got really messy after the media timeout as the Rams stepped up their defensive pressure and basically forced the ball into Esther Little’s hands, which proved to be the death blow for the Bulldogs as the team got bullied all over the place and seemingly couldn’t run an effective offensive set across the final 5 minutes.
This allowed Colorado State to go back and forth with the Bulldogs before they finally took the lead in the final seconds of the period. With the Rams leading by 1 with less than a minute left, Yvonne Ejim was fouled twice, but could only make one of her two free throws, which yielded a tie game that was headed into overtime.
At this point, I was still hopeful given this team’s performance in their previous closeout win against Rice and their close defeat against Missouri State where they almost came back from a strong deficit early on. However, things just weren’t meant to be as the Rams continued their stingy defense while the Bulldogs never looked confident with the ball in their hands and the game ended with the home team winning 74-72.
It’s a disappointing loss for several reasons.
First, this team needed a bounce-back win against quality competition after getting their socks blown off while on vacation in the Caribbean. Second, we saw basically the same issues that have plagued this team across the year have crept up again this season with poor turnovers, an inability to enter the ball into the post, and less than ideal composure when securing an offense rebound. And finally, the team crumbled when the opposition started clamping down on anyone not named Esther Little, which just highlights the unbalanced nature of this squad.
I’m not going to go into a lot of details, but this game hurts and the Bulldogs are now sitting at 4-6 heading into their final non-conference matchup against Eastern Washington this coming Saturday. Let’s hope the coaching staff gets this team into the right headspace before this home matchup that will take place on 12/14 at 5:00 PM EST and be featured on ESPN+. Onwards and upwards, Bulldogs.