UCLA women hold off Washington to reach Pac-12 Tournament semis

 

After getting outscored in two straight quarters, the UCLA women’s basketball team needed a strong fourth quarter to finish off Washington and secure a trip to the Pac-12 Tournament semifinals.

But the Bruins didn’t just needs points, they needed what Coach Cori Close calls “passion plays.”

Charisma Osborne and Michaela Onyenwere turned it on in the final quarter as the third-seeded Bruins beat the 11th-seeded Huskies, 58-46, in a quarterfinal on Thursday night at Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas.

“We are a much-improved shooting team than we were a year ago, but it is still not the preeminent part of our success,” Close said. “Our success is built on defense, rebounding and passion plays. And passion plays are non-statistical hustle plays that we believe are the intangibles that lead us to high levels of play and help us survive bad shooting nights.”

Onyenwere scored six of her 12 points in the fourth quarter and Charisma Osborne also had 12 points and 10 rebounds for the Bruins (15-4), while Lauryn Miller had nine points and Natalie Chou added seven.

UCLA will meet second-seeded Arizona (16-4) in a semifinal on Friday at 8 p.m. Arizona defeated seventh-seeded Washington State, 60-44, on Thursday.

Top-seeded Stanford (23-2), which throttled eighth-seeded USC, 92-53, will face fifth-seeded Oregon State (11-6) in Friday’s 5 p.m. semifinal. The Beavers upset fourth-seeded Oregon, 71-64.

UCLA staved off upset-minded Washington (7-14), which pulled within three early in the fourth but couldn’t gain enough momentum to seize control of the game.

After cutting the Bruins’ lead to 44-41 with 8:22 left, but under UCLA’s defensive pressure, the Huskies missed their next four shots and turned the ball over on another possession. Washington’s only points during a crucial five-minute stretch came from two free throws by Tameiya Sadler.

Meanwhile, the Bruins hit five consecutive shots from the field, added a couple of free throws, and used a 12-2 run to open a 56-43 lead with 2:52 left and never looked back.

“Tonight we weren’t shooting our best and that’s what we kept talking about in the huddles, ‘Okay, y’all, we know it’s a battle right now on the offensive end but let’s get stops,’” Onyenwere said. “That’s something we can do all the time. When we’re able to run like that it’s so fun to play with my teammates. I think that’s kind of where we kind of turned it around and kind of flipped that switch.

“At the end of the day we found a way, and moving forward we’re gonna go into (the game against) Arizona, kind of figure out what we need to do to get a win there, but yeah, I’m proud of my team for just sticking it out and winning this one.”

The Bruins outscored Washington in the paint, 32-26, and 10-5 on second-chance points.

It looked as if UCLA was going to put the game away early, as the Bruins held Washington scoreless for more than four minutes and without a field goal for nearly six, during a first-period stretch that saw them use an 11-0 run to build a 16-5 lead.

Emily Bessoir gave the Bruins a 15-point lead just moments into the second quarter with a long 3-pointer, but Washington turned the tables and capitalized on seven turnovers by UCLA, which also shot just 25% from the field in the second quarter.

The Huskies used a 13-0 run over more than seven minutes to pull within two before UCLA’s Lindsey Corsaro made a 3-pointer and moments later a layup, putting UCLA ahead by five for a halftime lead of 30-25.

Chou’s defense late in the third quarter helped thwart another Huskies rally, as she recorded three steals in less than two minutes, one of which allowed the Bruins to extend their lead to five, at 42-37.

The Bruins missed nine of their last 11 shots in the first half. They looked like the complete opposite of a team that just registered a pair of record-breaking shooting performances in their previous two games, most recently against USC on Feb. 26, when they went 16 for 23 from 3-point range (69.6%), the most 3-pointers in a single game in program history. On Thursday, UCLA finished 2 for 18 (11.1%) from beyond the arc.

“We’re not a live-by-the-three, die-by-the-three kind of team,” Close said. “We just needed to be a lot more poised and go ‘Hey, you know what, let’s not take the first open three.”

Quay Miller had a game-high 19 points on 9-for-16 shooting with seven rebounds for Washington, while Sadler chipped in 12 points.

Washington coach Jody Wynn said the Huskies were dealt their biggest blow when leading scorer Haley Van Dyke couldn’t return to the game in the second half after hitting her head on the court. Van Dyke, who averages 12.5 points and 6 rebounds per game, had just two points in 17 minutes in the first half.

“Haley’s led us all year long,” Wynn said. “She’s led us from the moment she showed up on campus in the Fall. She’s one of our most experienced players. When she went down and wasn’t able to come back to the court with us and fight, it kind of rattled us for a little bit.”

Sadler, a freshman guard, was the Huskies’ most well-rounded player in a 68-54 first-round upset of No. 6 seed Colorado, as she scored 18 points with a career-high eight assists and three steals.

The tournament championship game is Sunday at 5 p.m. (ESPN2).

News services contributed to this story.

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