Women’s basketball can’t overcome Cal

Daily Trojan

The women’s basketball team’s season ended on Thursday morning, as they lost 71-58 to Cal in the first round of the Pac-12 Tournament at the KeyArena in Seattle. Cal forward Kristine Anigwe was the x-factor in a tightly contested game. She scored 34 points with 13 rebounds, dropping 11 points in the final quarter.
“Just a hard-fought game for 40 minutes,” head coach Cynthia Cooper-Dyke said. “Kristine [Anigwe] was tough to stop. I thought Cal made crucial baskets in the important moments of the game, and we couldn’t necessarily get the stops we needed.”
Before Anigwe’s impressive fourth quarter shifted the game’s momentum, USC was neck and neck with Cal. They led by 1 point after the first quarter and trailed 30-28 at halftime.
“We missed some defensive assignments when we were supposed to trap [Anigwe],” Cooper-Dyke said. “Then we allowed her to get too deep in the paint, whereas before we were very physical with her. There were some early fouls called that I thought made us tentative defensively against Kristine. And it was tough to stop her once she got into an offensive rhythm.”
Junior forward Kristen Simon came back strongly after playing only 11 minutes against Arizona due to injury. On Thursday, she played 22 minutes, scoring 17 points on an efficient 8-of-14 shooting.
While Simon produced a solid outing for her team, the 3-point shooting struggles that plagued the Trojans against Arizona State and Arizona continued. USC shot under 30 percent from long range for the third game in a row, this time going 3-of-14. Over the last three games, senior sharpshooter Courtney Jaco has shot a surprising 4-of-18 from long distance. She is the second all-time 3-point scorer in school history.
After trading blows in the first half, Cal went on a quick 7-0 run to start the third quarter. The Bears led by as many as nine in ...

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