FanPost

Weisner outbattles Walton as Washington falls to #9 Beavers

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POST-GAME HIGHLIGHTS

It was a poor shooting night from both teams, but the Beavers out battled the Huskies for a 75-67 win Monday evening to remain undefeated in PAC-12 play.

Despite holding a lead for most of the contest and holding Sophomore Kelsey Plum to what might be the worst shooting night of her life, the Beavers could never manage to put Washington away. The reason being, despite Plum’s abysmal 10 points on 3-16 shooting, OSU’s own star Sophomore guard Sydney Wiese shot an equally bad 1-7 from the floor to finish with only 7 points to go along with her game high 12 assists.

With neither team’s star player producing in the scoring column, it became a duel between Washington’s Talia Walton and OSU’s Jamie Weisner. Walton, who is on pace to break UW’s all time blocks record in the next two weeks, finished the night with 22 points on 8-20 shooting, including 5-12 from three. Her efforts were more than matched, however, by Weisner who was absolutely on fire. With Washington’s defense focusing on preventing Ruth Hamblin from doing to them what she had done to Washington State, Weisner managed to repeatedly get wide open looks at threes. She finished the game with 26 points on 9-15 shooting, going 6-9 from downtown.

Despite being the focus of a tough Washington defense, Hamblin still produced. Finishing with 19 points, 10 rebounds and 4 blocks on the night. Her huge size advantage proving too much for the much smaller Washington frontline to contain.

Despite Hamblin’s effectiveness, Washington remained close the entire game, never letting OSU pull away. Jazmine Davis, showing her Senior leadership, pushed the Washington pace of fast breaks in order to beat Hamblin down and prevent her from blocking easy layups. Davis finished with 15 points and 6 assists on the night.

After the Beavers matched their biggest lead of the second half at 58-50 with 8:34 to go in the game, Washington made its run. Over the next two minutes the Dawgs outscored the Beavers 13-2 to take a 63-60 lead. Washington would hold a lead until the 3:56 mark when Weisner would burry another jumper to give OSU the lead for good.

The Huskies remained within one possession until Hamblin made a layup with 53 seconds left. Washington was unable to score again the remainder of the game and the Beavers knocked down their free throws each time UW fouled, leading to a final score of 75-67.

Despite the loss, UW (11-4, 3-3 PAC-12) showed once again that they will be team to be reckoned with come tournament time. Despite Plum contributing just 10 points on 19% shooting, and the team being greatly outsized by the #9 ranked, NCAA tournament tested Beavers (16-1, 6-0 PAC-12) , the game was up for grabs with less than a minute to go. Another take away from the contest is that OSU could legitimately have a chance to make it to the final four. Their size, depth and experience was on full display, and with Wiese, Hamblin and Weisner it will be tough for most opponents to match up with them player for player.

Washington next plays Colorado Friday in Seattle.