Forty minutes of full effort focus will once again be the calling card for the Long Beach State women’s basketball team (3-3), as it will host another Pac-12 foe in Arizona (4-2) on Sunday.
The 49ers suffered a blowout loss to the No. 1 Stanford on Sunday but collected a pair of emotional wins over Washington and Utah Valley earlier in the week. The victory over Washington marked LBSU’s first win over a Pac-12 team in five years, and Friday’s road win at Utah Valley required a stunning comeback from a 22-point deficit.
“We’re competing,” head coach Jody Wynn said. “We showed tremendous amount of heart coming back at Utah Valley after being down 22 points. We showed resiliency. That was a gut check.”
The ‘Niners may have gotten away with a slow start at Utah Valley, but they shouldn’t expect to be able to do the same against Pac-12 schools like Arizona and Washington.
“The way we beat Washington was discipline for 40 minutes,” Wynn said. “We didn’t have a lot of lapses where somebody fell asleep defensively or somebody didn’t move offensively in the right manner.”
Arizona started its season with four straight wins, but it has since hit a bit of a slump. The Wildcats have lost two of their last three, with the losses coming by a combined 25 points. They have also done a lot of traveling lately, as they made stops in Texas and the Bahamas before coming to The Beach.
The Wildcats are led by senior guard Davellyn Whyte, a sharpshooter who has earned All-Pac-12 honors each of her previous three seasons. “Arizona has a prolific scorer in Whyte,” Wynn said. “She can shoot from anywhere in the gym.”
The Wildcats have another deadeye outside shooter in junior wing Kama Griffitts, who is shooting 36 percent from beyond the arc.
Arizona has also taken full advantage of its length and athleticism, as it averages 43.2 rebounds per game. Five of its players average over five boards per contest.
“Arizona is extremely athletic,” Wynn said. “They have some great rebounders.”
Conversely, the ‘Niners only have two players averaging over five rebounds per game. Point guard Alex Sanchez leads the team with 6.7 per game, and forward Ella Clark has been counted on for 5 rebounds per game. With just 37.5 rebounds per game as a team, lack of aggressiveness under the rim has been one of the biggest weaknesses for The Beach this season.
“I would like for our big players to rebound better,” Wynn said. “But we certainly can’t take away Alex [Sanchez’s] basketball instincts. She has a great nose for the ball. A lot of rebounding is about instincts, and she has pretty good instincts.”
The Wildcats have been able to rely on their defense as much as their offense to win games this year. They have held opponents to only 60.5 points per game on 38 percent shooting so far.
Wynn said she believes her team needs “focus, discipline and play harder than [the Wildcats] do” to withstand Arizona’s defensive pressure.
“I expect us to play harder than every opponent we play and play with the effort that we need,” she said. “We’ve played well in spurts [this season]. That will give us confidence to know that anybody can beat anybody on any given day. If we’re down, we can come back and win, and if we’re up, we can still lose.”
The game is scheduled to tip off at 1 p.m. on Sunday at the Walter Pyramid.