Super sloppy third quarter... The Aggies have more turnovers than rebounds and have only scored six so far.

56-53 after three.

Aggies are taking many more threes in this game and have returned to their non-rebounding ways. Need to fix that in the fourth.

Aggies drawing a bunch of fouls and are in the bonus with seven to play.

Doesn't do any good if players miss their FT, of course.

Aggies up three with just under three to go.

Still up three with a minute left. Aggies can't quite pull away.

UCD up four with 30 seconds left. UCD had a missed three, but Konrad got the offensive rebound and was fouled. Missed one, made one.

St Mary's makes a quick two and fouls immediately. Song misses both. :meh:

Karley with the steal! SMC fouls. Makes one, misses one. Up three with fourteen seconds left.

SMC makes a three with two seconds left; tied at 74.

Ladies need need need to make FTs at the end of games.

Eaton to Bertsch for two!

One second left....

SMC misses a three, and the Aggies pull out a two-point win, 76-74. Better to be lucky than good?

Morgan with 22 and the Eatons two rebounds short of a triple double. :wink:

Aggies forced 18 TOs and only committed 8. The rebounding was a serious issue, though. Bunch of second chance points for SMU.

Great game. Very entertaining and a great shot by bertsch to win it. Both teams hustled. A few more free throws down the stretch would have been nice but overall a lot of fun

Slick.

Reverse angle:

What a great shot by Bertsch! Thanks for all the timely posts, Russ. I wasn't able to watch this game and reading your posts made me feel like I was there in the final minute.

Yes, thanks for posting Russ. I enjoyed reading all of them after we got home.

The women only have one more game before league play. Seems like odd scheduling to only have 2 games during the holiday break. At least it will give them plenty of time to practice. Last nights game was the best I've seen them play this year. Offense got a little stagnant in the 2nd half, but the defensive effort was there. St. Mary's had a couple of very capable low post players that hurt us. We'll have to work on our interior defense for when we face CSUN and their 6'4" stud Channon Fluker.

Beautifully executed play. That was not an easy shot by Morgan but nothing but net! Karley Eaton curled around to the top of the 3 point line and was open for Morgan to kick the ball out too. The team made the coaches look good on that play! :grin:

Yeah, I was wondering why the player guarding the inbounds hadn't crashed down on Morgan--after I watched a couple times, I saw that she got caught trying to decide between the double team and guarding Kourtney coming off the sideline.

edit: actually upon further, further review, she just didn't commit to the DT.

Just a point about St. Mary's game tying possession. We were up by 3 when the Gaels bring the ball up court (14 secs left). We had THREE fouls to give. We easily could have killed most of the clock by forcing them to keep in bounding the ball. And this was coming off of a timeout, so the there was plenty of opportunity to communicate it to the players. Then when the Gaels got the ball deep we collapsed down (as we had most of the game) instead of continuing to guard the 3 point shooters. The center finds the open shooter who nails an open shot (contested late) to tie and set up Morgan's game winner. I thought we dreadfully mismanaged that whole defensive play and that could have cost us the game. Hopefully we learn.

Given the team's defensive play to that point, stealing an inbounds pass was not out of the realm of possibility, either.

On the flip side, Aggies did have a few players with 3 fouls and one (Bessolo?) with four, IIRC, so maybe that's why the coaches decided not to foul? Would be fun/interesting to hear from them on this.

Great point.

You're right about the foul situation. Bessalo was out the last bit, probably due to her 4 fouls, even though her defense was needed. Seems we could have put some of the players at the end of the bench in to be the designated foulers. The coaching staff is top notch, though, so I'm sure they weighed all the alternatives and settled on just trying to play good solid defense.

Another week, another Big West PotW for Morgan Bertsch.

I didn't realize that she's in the top ten in career scoring for active players in the NCAA. That's wild. I would've guessed that the big name programs had a lock on that.

She a joy to watch.