Jan. 17, 2014
By Mike Esse, GoPSUsports.com Student Staff Writer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Coming off a double-digit loss to Purdue where Penn State (12-4, 3-1) allowed its most points all season, Coquese Washington stressed the improvement of her defense in all facets against Ohio State (12-8, 2-2).
After a dominating 66-42 win over the Buckeye's where the Lady Lions held Ohio State to just five offensive rebounds and marked the lowest point total an opponent has scored against Penn State, it's safe to say an improvement was made on Thursday in the Bryce Jordan Center.
Thursday's stout defensive effort started with rebounding for Penn State. The Lady Lions out rebounded the Buckeyes 54-36, including 34 defensive rebounds. Ariel Edwards led the way with 10 total rebounds while Talia East and Alex Harris tallied nine and eight, respectively. The performance was satisfying for Penn State after a week of practice focusing on limiting the opponent's second chances.
"We talked about it in practice and emphasized how important it is for everyone to get in there and rebound," Washington said. "When you have numerous people who do a good job crashing the glass you can just assume somebody else is going to get the rebound and when you're tall you can sometimes forget to use your fundamentals in terms of boxing out, but we didn't do that tonight. We were really aggressive going after the ball and that helped us."
Combined with the strong rebounding performance from Penn State was forcing 22 Buckeye turnovers that turned into 17 Lady Lion points. Turnover numbers and rebound numbers were exactly where Penn State wanted to see them when developing the game plan prior to Thursday's match up.
Ohio State went on two major scoring droughts in each half, mainly because of the Lady Lion zone defense. In the first half Ohio State went over eight minutes without scoring leading to a 9-0 Penn State scoring run. Penn State started half number two without allowing the Buckeyes to score a point for the first 5:13 to open their lead to 17 points.
Senior guard Dara Taylor credited Penn State's zone defense and their versatility as to why they had such a strong defensive performance.
"I think we have a lot of different weapons on this team and I think with the zone, we can come at you with a lot of height, a lot of length, a lot of speed and athleticism," said Taylor. "That means we can get out to shooters and stop dribble penetration. I think we are so versatile in it that it's pretty difficult for teams to score."
Another promising sign was Penn State's ability to stop Ohio State's leading scorer Ameryst Alston who entered the contest averaging 16.9 points per game and was coming off a 29-point performance in her last outing against No. 22 Indiana. Alston tallied just 12 points Thursday night, her lowest point total through four conference games.
With an abundance of great scorers in the Big Ten, Washington will use her team's play against Alston as a teaching point moving forward.
"Absolutely," Washington said when asked if she would look back to her team's play on Alston in the future. "We have got to lock in on the best players in this conference and we've got to make it tough for them to get good looks and we've got some good players and they're going to make some tough plays."
Penn State will be up to another tough task when they travel to East Lansing to face Michigan State on Sunday, Jan. 19 on ESPN2 at 5 p.m.. The Spartans feature two lethal scorers in Aerial Powers and Annalise Pickrel, who average 14.0 and 13.8 points per game respectively.