LAS VEGAS — While the BYU women’s basketball team made a magical run through the West Coast Conference Tournament a year ago and captured the championship, the Cougars’ stay at Orleans Arena this time was short-lived.
No. 3 seeded BYU trailed almost the entire game against a physical, aggressive No. 6 Pepperdine team and were eliminated from the WCC tournament in the quarterfinals, 62-51, Saturday afternoon.
“It was just a difficult night all around on the defensive and offensive side,” said BYU guard Paisley Johnson, who finished with a team-high 15 points and grabbed five rebounds. “It was the type of game where we needed to really work together. Sometimes, it wasn’t as unified as you’d hoped. That’s one thing that got us in a slump and in a hole.”
“It’s been a hard season. But it’s been a season that’s been very rewarding. I’ve seen a lot of players develop and get better.” — BYU coach Jeff Judkins
The two teams were tied early in the fourth quarter before the Waves went on a decisive 17-4 run. The Cougars scored only three field goals over the final seven minutes of the game.
“I want to congratulate Pepperdine. They played a really good game. At the end, they made the plays,” said BYU coach Jeff Judkins. “We didn’t make our plays offensively or defensively when they needed to. I’m proud of my team. My team didn’t play their best tonight, but they didn’t give up and they fought. We had our chances.”
BYU swept the regular-season series against Pepperdine but they opened the game making just four of their first 20 attempts from the floor and they were down 22-13 early in the second quarter. BYU went on a 10-0 run to take a brief 23-22 advantage but fell behind 27-23 at halftime.
For the game, the Cougars shot only 32% from the field, including 3 of 15 from 3-point range. Pepperdine out-rebounded BYU 43-33.
“We talked before the game that if you win the rebounding battle, you win the game. And that’s tough for us because we’re not very big,” said Waves coach Kristen Dowling. “We won the rebounding battle by 10. That’s huge. Because we’re small, we have to be aggressive. We have to pressure and do different things. That was absolutely the difference in the game.”
“They guarded our post very aggressively. They switched a lot,” Judkins said. “The rebounding situation is kind of misleading. When you don’t shoot the ball as well, the other team is going to get more defensive rebounds. I thought tonight we were all right. We did make some mistakes on rebounding.”
Pepperdine’s Hannah Friend scored 15 points, Barbara Sitanggan scored 13 points and collected eight rebounds and Monique Andriuolo added 12 points.
For BYU, Sara Hamson had 11 points and five rebounds while Brenna Drollinger scored 10.
In the first half, BYU guard Maria Albiero suffered a nose laceration, forcing her to the bench. She returned to the game later but ended up playing just 22 minutes. In her place, Kaylee Smiler played well but the Cougars had to make some adjustments with Drollinger.
“I thought Smiler did well. She was really active in the zone,” Judkins said. “The negative part of it is, Brenna had to bring the ball up and has to set everything up. It gets her out of rhythm of what she’s trying to do offensively. We have certain plays for Paisley and Brenna. When Brenna plays the point, then you have one option: Paisley. That affected us a little bit. For the most part, Smiler played pretty good for us.”
While Pepperdine (16-14) will face No. 2 seed San Diego in Monday’s semifinals, the season is likely over for BYU (18-11), which had won five of its previous six games.
How would Judkins assess this campaign?
“It’s been a hard season. But it’s been a season that’s been very rewarding. I’ve seen a lot of players develop and get better,” he said. “Sara and Paisley had to change their roles completely from last year. They did an outstanding job with that. Paisley had to look to score more and create more. Sara had to try to score offensively and defensively she had to change a lot of things from last year. She had to close out on people. They both did a great job and that will help us for next year big time.”
Next year will mark the return of guard Shaylee Gonzales, who suffered a season-ending ACL injury last July. Gonzales was the WCC Newcomer of the Year as a freshman a year ago.
“We get a pretty good player coming back next year that can create and help and with Paisley’s experience this year will make Paisley a lot better player,” Judkins said, referring to Gonzales. “If we can get some of our younger kids more confident, we could have a really special team, I think, next year.”