It felt like it was freezing outside in Fort Collins, but somehow the shooting inside Moby Arena was even colder as the San Diego State women’s basketball team gritted out a 46-44 win over the Colorado State Rams on Wednesday afternoon.
On a career-high scoring day with a game tops 15 points, Kaelyn Hamilton grabbed a critical offensive rebound with 4.2 seconds remaining to give reigning Mountain West Player of the Week Nala Williams another chance at the free throw line. Williams made 1 of 4 at the stripe in the final six seconds, then Nat Martinez forced a turnover by Lexus Bargesser to seal the result.
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“What a great defensive job by us, I thought we did a really good job trying to take away what they wanted to do and made it tough for them,” said head coach Stacie Terry-Hutson. “They got to the basket a little more than I would like, but I thought we did a good job of taking away their strengths and obviously the score reflects that.”
The match up between the top scoring offense in San Diego State (16-3, 10-0) and defense in CSU (17-5, 8-3) was the Mountain West’s second-lowest scoring conference game of the season, as the Aztecs held the Rams to a season-low 30.5% shooting from the field.
Meanwhile, the Scarlet and Black survived their third-bottom field goal percentage game (34.0%) of the season thanks to Hamilton’s 15 points while going 7-for-11 from the field. Alyssa Jackson was critical off the bench as well, grabbing 11 rebounds to go with 3 points as the Aztecs had a 51-30 rebounding advantage with an 11-4 edge on the offensive glass.
Naomi Panganiban scored all 8 of her points on a perfect day at the charity stripe despite missing all eight of her field goal attempts, while Williams had 7 points and Bailey Barnhard added 6 points — including a key turnaround jumper in the paint that sparked a late 10-0 run by SDSU that gave the visitors a 7 point lead with 28 seconds left.
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“That’s what I love about this team, we’re coming together, our bench was great,” Terry Hutson said. “I thought Alyssa did good today, Kaelyn came off the bench and was fantastic, got us going offensively.”
But it nearly came undone by missed free throws down the stretch, as outside of Panganiban’s 4-for-4 at the line the rest of the team went 2-for-8 in the fourth quarter and 1-for-6 in the final 20 seconds as CSU was able to pull within 1 point.
Still, San Diego State won despite without getting anything from 3-point land, their first time coming up empty from downtown for an entire game since a loss at Santa Clara on Nov. 13, 2018. The Aztecs had tied the second-most made 3’s in a game (14) twice in their previous three games before facing the Rams and entered the game with a conference-leading average of 9.3 triples per.
They also equaled the second-most turnovers during a regulation game this season, as the Scarlet and Black survived coughing the ball up 16 times by holding the Rams to just 5 points off turnovers.
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“I just thought this was a really good team win. Again ugly, ugly, ugly. But when you can win on the road in this conference at altitude against a very good team we’re going to take away some positives from that,” Terry-Hutson said.
The teams traded glacial shooting stretches in the first half, with SDSU having their best defensive quarter of the season by allowing only 3 Colorado State points in the opening quarter on 1 of 14 shooting. But after Hamilton’s jumper with six minutes left before halftime, the visitors would go scoreless the rest of the way, scoring just 4 points in the second and taking an 18-14 lead at the break.
Bargesser led the Rams with 14 points while Brooke Carlson also had 13 points, but the duo combined to shoot 11-for-30 and the rest of the squad made just 7 of 29 before the announced education day crowd of 5,582, which was bolstered by local school kids.
SDSU had previously won at Kansas State on the Wildcats’ education day and notched a win before the largest crowd in Aztecs’ women’s basketball history in a field trip day game against New Mexico on Jan. 14.
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Up next the Aztecs return to The Mesa to celebrate Girls & Women in Sports Day against the Nevada Wolf Pack on Saturday, Jan. 31. As part of the festivities, SDSU’s 2010 Sweet 16 team will be honored prior to the 1 p.m. tipoff at Viejas Arena, with the game to be streamed on the Mountain West Network.
