The Long Beach State women’s basketball team applied relentless defensive pressure against UC Davis on Wednesday night. LBSU forced 22 turnovers and held the Aggies to 36% shooting.
It was Long Beach State’s misfortune that its offense was equally despairing all night.
Third-seeded LBSU watched shot after shot clank off a rim, spin in-and-out or just catch more air than hoop in its Big West Tournament quarterfinal in Henderson, Nevada, ending a promising season with a 55-45 loss to the sixth-seeded Aggies.
Long Beach (19-8) shot just 29.8% overall and was 3 for 19 from behind the 3-point arc, but those long-range misses weren’t any more off-target than the close-range attempts.
Those 22 turnovers forced led to just eight points as even wide-open shots misfired. Long Beach was almost as bad at the free-throw line, missing half of its 16 attempts.
Maddi Utti led Long Beach with 19 points. She was 7-for-16 shooting, while the rest of the team was 10 for 41. The grad senior transfer from Fresno State also had nine of LBSU’s 24 rebounds.
“Our defense allowed us to get some shots in the open floor,” Long Beach head coach Jeff Cammon said. “We had good looks. Every time we forced a turnover, we felt we were a basket away from a run.
“But there’s only so much you can do when you can’t put the ball in the basket.”
UC Davis sophomore Evanne Turner hit four 3-pointers in the first quarter, all of them loosely defended considering the Aggies don’t tend to rely too heavily on 3-point shooting.
The pattern rarely changed thereafter. UC Davis led 15-8 after one quarter and extended the lead to 11 in the second before settling for a 32-25 lead at halftime.
Long Beach got within two points in the third quarter, but the Aggies hit a 3-pointer off a deflected rebound and pushed their lead back to seven by the end of the quarter.
Long Beach got within five points with two minutes left, but Turner made a 3-pointer on the ensuing possession to stop any momentum.
UC Davis (15-12) didn’t win the regular-season title for the first time since 2017, but was remains a viable Big West Tournament contender.
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“UC Davis has a champion’s pedigree,” Cammon said. “They made plays at big times. They’ve dominated the conference for several years.”
Turner finished with 19 points and was 5 for 10 from 3-point range for the Aggies, who had a 39-24 rebounding advantage. Former Fairmont Prep standout Cierra Hall had 14 points, eight rebounds and three steals, while Sydney Burns had nine points and 12 rebounds and Sage Stobbart had nine points and six rebounds.
UC Davis next faces No. 2 seed UC Irvine (20-10) in a semifinal on Friday at 2:30 p.m. The winner advances to Saturday’s championship game against the UC Riverside-Hawaii winner.