Washington Women’s basketball played Vermont at home on Sunday afternoon, winning by 30+ points. Coming into the game, Vermont looked like it would be the first challenge for this year’s UW team, who is still undefeated. Vermont also maintained their core players, like UW did, and have had 4 20+ win seasons in a row. They will likely win their conference this year.
The first quarter the Huskies came out missing most of their shots which meant that Vermont kept the game close with their tough defense. The Huskies did break out of it to go on a 9-0 run, but then slowed down again, shooting 1-7 from the field. UW ended the quarter on top 11-7. Vermont stuck with UW, continuing to play defense well, and were definitely partially responsible for UW shooting 22% from the field during the 2nd quarter. The game ground down to a slow defensive battle, with Vermont getting within 6 points before ending the half with UW up 29-20.
After halftime, UW came out swinging. They instated a 2-1-2 full court zone with Avery Howell and Hannah Stines pressing up court on the ball handlers. This sped up the game, which was in UW’s favor, helping them to win the quarter 20-9. They led 49-29 at the end of the third and never looked back from there.
Notable:
- Brynn McGaughy had a career high 20 points on 9-15 shooting and 23 minutes of play. She played excellent defense as well. This true freshman is good and is fun to watch. She didn’t get the start today, but came off the bench as the 6th Woman 3:30 minutes into the game. The future is looking good with her in it.
- Elle Ladine still hasn’t played a game. The best I can find is that she is “day to day” and Elise Woodward said she was “bothered by an injury”, but what is up? Why isn’t last year’s leading scorer for the team not playing and why aren’t more people asking about it?
- UW’s defense and help side so much better than last year. It was fun to watch them play defense as one unit. Hopefully this will solidify when they play tougher, ranked teams.
- Sayvia Sellers just received National Player of the Week honors for this past week, coming off a 30 point game vs. Fresno State. She still had 22 points today but it was harder fought than the last game.
- UW had 30 bench points today. Last year they rarely had contributions from their bench, so I’m hopeful that this means we are a deeper team that will make a deeper run into post-season play this year.
After the first few games of the season, UW is showing promise, having added a stronger defensive schema, a nice 2 man (woman) game with McGaughy and Grabovskaia at the post, and are looking for their first real challenge.
Next Up:
UW plays Southern at home on Tuesday at 6pm. Southern won their conference last year and made the NCAA tournament. They won their first game and lost their second game vs. UCLA.