UW took on the Phoenix of UW-Greenbay at noon on Saturday and won 79-74.
#20 UW came off their first loss last week against USC – their first Big10 conference game of the season. Greenbay had an 8-3 record coming into the game. Greenbay made the tournament last year, losing to Alabama in the first round. In other words, they were a strong team and a good match up for UW.
Sayvia Sellers started the game well for UW, scoring their first 10 points. Greenbay showed themselves to be fast, organized, fundamental and disciplined. UW switched up their defense and pressed full court on dead balls and missed shots and disrupted Greenbay’s flow in multiple possessions in a row.
Devin Coppinger hit a three for UW’s first points other than Sellers. The quarter ended with Greenbay up 23-20. UW’s starters (other than Sellers) combined for 2 points.
The second quarter was more of the same battle, with Greenbay building their lead up to 6 points at one point. UW stayed in it and was behind 42-40 going into the half. Sellers had 16 and Avery Howell had 8. Greenbay had 20 points in the paint and UW had 10.
The third quarter started and Greenbay came out swinging. UW didn’t have much of a response and pretty quickly found themselves down 53-44. Langley called a timeout after a three minute scoring drought. Offensively, UW settled for taking threes instead of working to get to the paint. The rest of the third quarter, UW languished without showing much aggression other than Sellers. Greenbay led at the end of the third 65-56 and it looked like UW had given up.
However, the Dawgs fought back to start the 4th quarter, finally playing aggressive and looking like they wanted to win. They outscored Greenbay 18-3 in the first 5 minutes in the quarter and all the starters contributed to that run this time, recovering from the first quarter slump.
With 34 seconds left, UW was up 76-74 with possession of the ball. Hannah Stines, who just missed a wide open three, got the ball and made a lay-in to bring the score to 78-74. Greenbay got the ball with 29 seconds left. The ball went out of bounds and the ref called it off Sellers to keep it Greenbay’s ball. Sellers protested and Langley challenged the call. With 20.5 seconds left, the call was overturned and UW got the ball. The ref called a 5 second violation (a very fast five seconds, in my humble opinion), which gave possession back to Greenbay with 19.7 seconds left. Greenbay got a shot off and Howell came down with the rebound, tying it up and giving possession back to UW. On the inbounds, Julia Grabovskaia got fouled and had the opportunity to shoot two free throws and made the first and missed the second. The Dawgs were able to hold on to win 79-74.
Game stats:
- Sayvia Sellers: 30 points, 2 assists
- Avery Howell: 11 points, 12 rebounds (second double-double for Avery in two games)
- Julia Grabovskaia: 10 points, 6 rebounds
- Greenbay outscored UW in the paint 36-24 as well as forced 14 UW turnovers. Not great, but UW forced 13 turnovers for Greenbay, essentially making it net neutral
- Almost every stat line is pretty close to the same for both teams, but UW made 14 threes to Greenbay’s 7, both keeping them in the game and make the game difference.
Where we’re at in the grand scheme of things:
- UW is ranked #20 in the nation, even after a loss to USC by 9 points
- Coming into this game, UW was 4th in the nation for scoring defense, only allowing 49.4 points. Greenbay upset that average.
- 11th in the nation for rebound advantage (+13.2)
- 12th in the nation in field goal percentage defense (32.7%)
- 23rd in the nation for rebounds per game (44.11)
Takeaways:
- Elle Ladine missed the first few games of the season and looked for 3/4 of this game like she didn’t know where she belonged. She didn’t look like her old leading scorer, take-charge self for the first three quarters.
- Greenbay played solid defense and protected the paint, making it difficult for UW to run their slash and pass offense. I’m sure this will be noted by Big10 teams going forward into conference play.
- I mentioned this earlier this season, but UW needed a test that they could dig deep and win. I’m hopeful that this was this game. They pulled together an 18 point run to start the 4th quarter and didn’t let their foot off the gas after that. All players locked in and they seemed to find themselves a bit.
Next up:
The Huskies play at Stanford this Friday the 19th at 7pm. Stanford is rebuilding after last year’s losses and so far their two losses this year have come at a combined seven points.