Missed shots. Turnovers. Only four offensive rebounds.
After the Oklahoma State Cowgirls’ 64-50 loss to Colorado last night, there were many reasons to blame the loss on. However, with 16:34 left in the second half, OSU was only down by 33-29.
After being down by eight at halftime, the Cowgirls (5-11, 1-4 in Big 12) went on a 6-2 run, thanks to a tough Cowgirl defense. The Buffaloes (14-2, 4-1) worked the ball inside to 6-foot-5-inch center Tera Bjorkland, who scored eight of her 14 points in the second half and grabbed six rebounds. CU forward Sabrina Scott scored 13 points on the night and had 12 rebounds.
With CU working the inside game on OSU, the Buffalo hustle and height advantage was just too much for the Cowgirls.
“I’m disappointed,” said OSU head coach Julie Goodenough. “I don’t think that our kids crashed the boards very well in the first half, but when you see 6 (foot)1 (inch), 6(foot)2(inch) people in front of you, you may just decide you that can’t get in there and get the rebound.
“It’s tough. We were at quite a bit of a height disadvantage and it’s tough when you can’t get offensive rebounds over people that are 6-1, 6-2, and you’re crashing the board with 5-9 kids.”
Through the course of the game, missed shots close to the goal only put distance between the Cowgirls and CU.
“Our defense was there,” said Thia Willis, who was 3-of-4 from three-point range and had 13 points on the night. “But on offense, we got the ball exactly where it needed to be. But there were times when we weren’t patient on offense and we rushed the ball.
“We had good looks, and again, it just wasn’t our night. We do have to reverse the ball a lot, and just be real patient. We just have to take care of the ball, also. We can get it where it needs to be, and run the clock down, but we may lose it at the same time. We just have to really value the ball. That was a part of the game plan, too. Just take care of the ball. When we did shoot the ball, we did get it in exactly the right spot, but it just didn’t go in for us tonight.”
When battling a team from behind, leading scorers have to produce. Although center Trisha Skibbe averages 16.3 points per game, the junior was held to nine points.
“It’s tough, because she’s one of our key players,” Meghan Craig said of Skibbe. “Our go-to player, I guess, and we have to have other people step up and score.”
While the Cowgirls were only with in a few points of CU during various times in the game, a scoreless stretch would soon follow. Implementing new offensive sets helped OSU, but on a night when shots didn’t fall, little would help.
“We’ve added a couple of new sets to try to get some high-percentage shots,” said Goodenough. “And we’d go to those in those stretches. It’s frustrating when you go through those spurts. I felt like, for the most part, our kids weren’t rushing their shots.
“We executed fairly decent and ran our sets pretty well. For the most part, they got the shots we wanted, we just couldn’t put them in.”
Brad Blood can be reached
via e-mail at:
bradlgb@okstate.edu
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