LAS VEGAS — The San Diego State women’s basketball team had been here before.
Two years in a row, the Aztecs advanced to the Mountain West Conference tournament final. And two years in a row they lost — to UNM in 2008 and Utah in 2009.
But the pattern didn’t repeat itself on Saturday at the Thomas & Mack Center. In overtime, the third-seeded Aztecs pulled ahead of No. 4 Utah, 70-60, to claim the tournament title and an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
“It’s nice for the first time not to be up here crying because we lost,” said Aztec guard Jene Morris, who scored 21 points. “We made it to the championship two years in a row and lost. So, just the fact (that) we worked so hard, battled through an overtime game against Utah, (which) I believe won three overtimes against TCU…”
To get there, the Aztecs, who got a first-round bye, ended Wyoming’s season in the quarterfinals, then went on to tear apart No. 2 BYU in the semifinals, winning 77-47.
“When it was winning time — money time — they understood how to dig deep and do what we needed to do,” said Aztecs’ head coach Beth Burns.
Especially against a Utah team which had experience in overtime. In addition to the triple overtime against TCU earlier in the season, Utah won an overtime game one day before Saturday’s matchup.
UNM had pushed Utah into extra minutes in the first round of the Mountain West Conference Tournament, a game which the Utes went on to win 51-55.
Even with all that overtime experience, the Utes couldn’t hit a basket in the last 10 minutes of the game, and the Aztec’s outscored the Utes 12-2 in the extra session with the Utes’ lone points coming from the free-throw line.
“I wouldn’t say we did anything differently besides kept them off the O-glass (on defense),” said Aztec guard and tournament MVP Quenese Davis, who scored a game-high 22 points.
“Coach pointed out to us at the timeout — if we keep them off the glass, we’ll be successful, and we were,” she said.
Starting the second half, the Utes led 34-33 and slowly built that lead to seven off a Halie Sawer layup with 5:22 left to go. That marked the end of the Utes’ field goals for the rest of the game, including the extra five minutes of overtime.
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Utah forward Kalee Whipple — who scored 12 points in the first half and only three in the second — said sometimes shots just don’t fall.
“They got their shots and that led to us just kind of getting frustrated, I think, at times,” Whipple said. “We still fought hard. We just didn’t hit a shot.”
On the other hand, Morris couldn’t miss a shot in the waning minutes of the game. To be fair, it is hard to miss open shots under the basket.
Morris got open layup after open layup in the final 10 minutes. She scored back-to-back fast-break layups with three minutes to go, tying the game at 56 and helping push her team into overtime.
Then in overtime, she hit another fast-break layup to push San Diego State to a 70-60 lead. She had the opportunity for another open bucket, but after driving the length of the court, Morris pulled up, ending the night with a ten point lead.
“At that point I wanted the clock to run out because after an overtime game, we were tired,” Morris said. “We just wanted the clock to run out. We didn’t want to be in the game any longer.”
Along side Morris — Davis, Whipple, Utah’s Taryn Wicijowski and Wyoming’s Hilary Carlson made the all-tournament team.
