ASU women's basketball tops Nebraska to advance in NCAA Tournament

AUSTIN, Texas – Midway through the fourth quarter, with her team down 11 points to the No. 7 Arizona State in the first quarter of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, No. 10 Nebraska head coach Amy Williams stood on the sideline and pleaded for her team to do one thing they hadn’t done well all game:

“Box out!” Williams yelled.

A short jump shot from sophomore forward Jaimie Ruden softly bounced off the rim, but the Sun Devils, as they had done seemingly all season, kept grabbing offensive rebounds . Thanks to the extra offensive possessions, the Sun Devils' double-digit lead kept staying in double digits.

“Box out!”

ASU redshirt junior forward Courtney Ekmark had already beat her defender to the left block. Ekmark grabbed the rebound, laid the ball in and was fouled. Williams turned around, put her fingers through her hair and then through her arms down in frustration. Arizona State head coach Charli Turner Thorne, meanwhile, cheered and clapped, as her team was on its way to a 73-62 win at the Frank Erwin Center.

The Sun Devils, who are in the NCAA Tournament for the 16th time and fifth straight year, will face the winner of the game between No. 15 Maine and No. 2 Texas later Monday evening.

Sophomore guard Robbi Ryan led the Sun Devils with 16 points, while junior forward Kianna Ibis added 14 points and Ruden had 10. But it was the rebounding, and specifically the offensive rebounding, that really made a big difference. Arizona State grabbed 21 offensive rebounds and Nebraska only grabbed eight.

“We wanted to stay aggressive on offensive rebounds and we just went at them,” Ibis said. “We don’t want to be boxed out, so we just went around them and got the ball.”

Midway through the third quarter, Arizona State, who almost upset South Carolina – the eventual national champions – in the second round of last year’s NCAA Tournament, trailed by three. But a 14-0 run over the next four minutes, and a 16-2 run to close out the third quarter, gave ASU an 11-point lead after three.

Arizona State didn’t trail for the rest of the game.

“We have a big focus on just finishing strong, so a fire just kind of went under our butts,” Ruden said. “We decided we needed to ramp up the pressure defensively and ramp up the energy and crashing the boards and boxing out.”

All season long, Arizona State, with the best defense in the Pac-12, had smothered opponents with its defense. The Sun Devils did the same thing with Nebraska in the first half of the game. The Huskers scored 13 points in the first quarter and 14 points in the second quarter. The Sun Devils held Nebraska to 40-percent shooting in the first half.

Arizona State, however, didn’t lead because it shot 35.5 percent in the first half, including 3-13 from 3-point range – a stat that shocked Turner Thorne since ASU isn’t a real big 3-point shooting team.

“We weren’t poised, and as the game went on, we settled down and we got better looks and played better together and that was the difference,” Ryan said.

The Sun Devils' big third-quarter run started innocuously with a short jumper from junior center Charnea Johnson-Chapman. Then came a driving layup from Ryan, a jumper, two free throws, a layup and, finally, a 3-point dagger from Ruden to cap-off the game-deciding run.