Dec. 10, 2016
By Anna Pitingolo, GoPSUsports.com Student Staff Writer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The Penn State Lady Lions used a strong showing on the boards and a dominant second quarter to win on Saturday against in-state rival Pittsburgh, 91-62, at the Bryce Jordan Center.
It was another close start for the Lady Lions as they trailed for much of the first quarter An Amari Carter 3-pointer with 20 seconds left put them ahead before Pitt tied the game up at 19 at the end of the frame.
But it was a dominant second quarter that gave Penn State a lead that they would hold onto for the rest of the game.
The Lady Lions outscored the Panthers 25-8, punctuated by seven scoreless minutes for Pitt, to take a 44-27 lead into halftime. In between the first and second quarters, head coach Coquese Washington made some adjustments to help her team speed up their pace going forward.
"We talked about how we were getting good shots so we needed to keep shooting the ball but the pace wasn't where we wanted it to be. I thought the first quarter was a little slow and we were a little sluggish," Washington said. "We made a couple of substitutions and got Sierra (Moore), Peyton (Whitted) and Jaylen (Williams) in the game. We got some offensive rebounds and then it seemed like the energy that we played with took off. That helped us and once we got going we were in good shape."
Junior guard Lindsey Spann had her most productive stretch of the game in the second quarter, where she scored 10 of her 20 total points. The team as a whole had 14 fast break points in the second period, compared to the two they had in the first.
"We definitely wanted to get stops defensively and once we got stops defensively that helped with our transition game and helped us play faster and play the up-tempo style game that we wanted to play. We wanted to dominate them and not give them second chances," Spann said.
Washington credits the depth of the bench to helping them in transition, saying "I think we are running hard. When we are able to sub and use our depth and keep people fresh, we can get up and down the floor."
Penn State was crashing the boards all day and ended the game with 47 rebounds compared to Pitt's 29. Senior Peyton Whitted and sophomore Jaylen Williams led the way for the Lady Lions with eight rebounds apiece. Panthers coach Suzie McConnell-Serio credited the Penn State's aggression on the boards.
"They just out muscled us. I mean, that's the bottom line. That was a disappointing thing, fighting for position, shot goes up, they just out hustled us today and that was a disappointing thing," McConnell-Serio said. "We talked about winning the hustle plays and that just didn't happen.
"We gave up way too many offensive rebounds. It was disappointing that we gave up an offensive rebound, they'd put it back and it was a three-point play. We just needed to be tougher, to finish our defense with a box-out."
Washington, on the other hand, gave a simple answer about her team's rebounding performance- "I was very happy" -and gave praise to her posts for grabbing rebounds on both ends of the floor.
"I thought our posts in particular did a really good job on the boards, especially the offensive boards. I think we had 12 offensive boards in the first half," Washington said. "That was key in establishing our size. We knew we had a size advantage once Brandi Harvey-Carr would leave the game so we wanted to be big."
The Lady Lions will take a week off for finals before they take on American University on Sunday Dec. 18 at 2 p.m. at the BJC.