Women’s basketball team loses focus in final seconds

Monday, March 3, 2008

Not playing hard for the entire 40 minutes of a game has been one of several problems for Kansas lately. Saturday afternoon it went a step further as the Jayhawks key lapses were measured in seconds rather than minutes.

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For additional coverage of this story, check out: Podcast: The Give 'n Go Turnovers doom Jayhawks again

Rashah McChesney/Iowa State Daily

Sophomore guard LaChelda Jacobs and senior forward Taylor McIntosh try and work a pick-and-roll in Kansas' game Saturday afternoon. The Jayhawks fell to the Cyclones, 51-42.

Several times in the second half, Iowa State either made a shot or got fouled with just one second remaining on the shot clock. The last of those came in the waning minutes of the game and served as backbreaking plays in a 51-42 Cyclone victory.

“We had a couple of mental lapses,” senior forward Taylor McIntosh said. “We forced them into tough twos, and then I’d come over to help at the end of the shot clock, and they called a foul.

“We had a couple plays like that where we had it, but it’s just the last two or three seconds.”

The most important play of the game came with 4:13 left and Kansas trailing 41-36, the closest it’d been since one minute into the second half.

Sophomore guard Danielle McCray just hit a jump shot, forcing Iowa State to use a time-out, and the Jayhawks played suffocating defense out of the break. That is until Cyclone guard Alison Lacey hit a fadeaway jumper with one tick left on the shot clock.

The Hilton Coliseum crowd – lulled to sleep by Kansas’ 6-0 run – erupted, and Lacey went to the free-throw line to push the lead back to eight thanks to a McIntosh foul on the play.

Kansas (15-13, 4-11) never recovered from that play.

“We lost focus and fouled on a shot that – (lets) them make that shot but (doesn’t) let them make it and let the crowd get excited about it,” coach Bonnie Henrickson said. “We needed the discipline for 30 seconds, not 29, and there was a couple of times we had it for 29 but that last second got us.”

The first half was a defensive grind with each team shooting a paltry 30 percent. Iowa State (18-10, 7-8) led by two at halftime, then - like all of Kansas’ recent opponents – it went on a big run to start the second half.

The Cyclones used a 15-3 run during the first nine minutes of the second half to push the score to 35-21. Lacey, guard Kelsey Bolte and forward Jocelyn Anderson had all 15 of those points, and the trio combined to score 30 of the Cyclones’ 31 second-half points.

“What locker we left (our game) in at halftime, I don’t know,” Henrickson said. “That’s where we lose the basketball game is the first three or four minutes.”

McCray was sidelined with foul trouble for much of the first half, but until the 9:40 mark in the second half, she still had as many fouls, two, as points.

Henrickson credits that to the Cyclones diamond-and-one defense, a junk formation that ensured McCray wouldn’t get an open look. McCray finished with a season low-tying six points, only the third time all year she’s been held to single digit scoring.

However, Iowa State’s attention to McCray did open things up down low where McIntosh had her second best game of the year with 15 points, 16 rebounds, three steals and a block. Kansas would have benefited greatly from an inside duo, but freshman center Krysten Boogaard still hasn’t snapped out of her funk and was held scoreless.

“Taylor went 6-for-8, and we needed to get it to her 18 times,” Henrickson said. “She had to get more touches on a night when Krysten really struggled.”

There were several bad Kansas stats after the game, (0-for-8 on three-pointers, three assists to 17 turnovers) but the most disappointing one came from missed opportunities. The Jayhawks pulled down 17 offensive rebounds and could only convert that into nine second-chance points.

“Great effort; that’s Taylor McIntosh flying around,” Henrickson said of the rebounds. “I’ve been fussing at her, and fussing and fussing that’s what we need, and she does that, but we don’t have enough other kids step up.”

Kansas plays its final regular season game of the year at home Wednesday night against No. 21 Kansas State.

— Edited by Jessica Sain-Baird

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