University Southern California Trojans
Women's Basketball Falls to Arizona, 73-63
June 21, 1999 | Women's Basketball
January 4, 1999
TUCSON, Ariz. - Four Wildcats reached double digits in scoring, led by sophomore guard Reshea Bristol's game-high 18 points, as the University of Arizona (6-5, 1-1) women's basketball team defeated USC (5-6, 1-1), 73-63, at home on Monday for their first Pac-10 win of the season.
USC controlled much of the first half, using a 10-1 run to gain an 11-point (22-11) lead midway through the period, and took a 36-29 lead into the locker room at the break. Arizona fought back through the early portion of the second half and finally gained its own 11-point lead (53-42) with a 13-1 spurt.
The Women of Troy scrapped back to within one point (57-56) at the 6:29 mark but would come no closer as the Cats used a 10-for-13 performance from the free throw line in the final five minutes of the contest to pull out the win.
Arizona forced 30 USC turnovers and held the Women of Troy to only 38.5 percent shooting in the second half, after they posted a 58 percent first half.
In addition to Bristol's 18 points, junior forward Angela Lackey contributed 16 points and a game-high-tying 10 rebounds for Arizona. Junior guard Felecity Willis and freshman forward Elizabeth Pickney added 13 and 12 points, respectively.
USC starting point guard Kristin Clark went down with a knee injury early in the game and did not return to the floor. The second-leading scorer for the Women of Troy, Clark is the fourth USC player to go out with a major injury this season.
"We don't know much about [the injury] yet. Kristin is going to have an MRI first thing tomorrow, and then we'll evaluate it from there," said USC head coach Chris Gobrecht. "We started this season with six guards, and now we are down to two."
Postgame Quotes:
University of Arizona head coach Joan Bovicini
"We definitely caused some problems for them with our press. But I have to give USC credit because they dictated the tempo of the game, especially in the first half. It is unfortunate that Kristin Clark went out. She is a very good player, and hopefully she is not seriously injured.
"It was very important for us to be able to change the tempo in the second half, and that allowed our press to create turnovers. But we still missed too many layups. We needed this game a lot, because we needed to get back into the conference race.
"Reshea (Bristol) had another great game. She is a lot different than she was a year ago, because she is playing with much more confidence. She played with a fire tonight that we have not seen much of this year.
"I really got after Angela Lackey in practice that she needed to be more aggressive in rebounding. She did that, and look what happened. She got a double-double, the first of her career.
"We have to try to simulate the physical play in practice as much as we can. The biggest difference for us in the Pac-10 play is that we play a lot of quality posts, even though we played some good teams in our early games. Adrian Williams is a very fine player, and we played Maylana Martin and Janea Hubbard, two other good players against UCLA.
"The press got to them because they did not know if we would press or trap them in the full court situations. It was a very physical game; that is the way that USC plays."
USC head coach Chris Gobrecht
On Kristin Clark:
"We don't know much about it, yet. She is going to have an MRI first thing tomorrow and then we will evaulate it from there. We started the season with six guards and are now down to two.
"I have a lot of faith in Camille (Norwood) to get things done in the game. But I think that we all feel that if we had not lost Kris, we would have been able to win the game. We had post players playing positions that they had never been at before. We were just trying to hold things together, and we were almost able to pull it out.
"Camille is a freshman who has just been seeing a little more time in the past couple of weeks. For her to be thrust into that position is very tough. We had Tashara Carter playing guard some of the game, and she is usually our small forward. She was forced to play guard most of the game.
"We made a lot of our mistakes because we were scrambling to deal with the changes in the line-up. They pressed to take advantage of the position that we were in. I would have done the same thing in that situation.
"We have worked very hard at rebounding. They did not get much off us in the half court set except for the rub-outs. As coaches, we did not prepare them well enough for that. They rubbed off the post on the ball side and that hurt us a lot because we did not adjust to it."
