ASU women's basketball (4-2) was thoroughly outplayed in its 65-37 loss to in-state rival No. 6 Arizona in Tucson on Thursday night.
The Wildcats jumped ahead early and never looked back, dominating every single facet of the game. The Sun Devils struggled to find any semblance of a rhythm offensively, shooting just 27% from the field and turning the ball over 23 times.
ASU head coach Charli Turner Thorne said Thursday's poor performance would be a learning moment for the entire roster.
"For every single person on the team, their habits bit them in the butt," Turner Thorne said. "As the game went on and we weren't making shots and struggling with the physicality of the game, we got inside ourselves."
Turnovers have been a consistent theme this season for the Sun Devils and that persisted in Tucson, with the Wildcats scoring 24 points off of ASU turnovers.
"We weren't locked in and staying with things aggressively. They did hit open shots. We just got soft. We weren't scoring and came back down and weren't locked in," Turner Thorne said. "We're not a team doing a great job valuing every possession."
The lone bright spot for ASU was junior guard Taya Hanson, who had her strongest performance of the season, finishing with 14 points on five of 11 shooting.
Despite her strong performance, Hanson was noticeably disappointed in the team's showing as a whole.
“When you lose, the individual part doesn’t matter as much," Hanson said. "I was rushing and we were rushing into things as a team. Arizona did a good job putting pressure on us as well."
Hanson remains confident the team will be able to turn the page quickly on the disappointing performance.
"We're learning from this loss and taking a lot of things away to be connected," Hanson said. "Our offense will work. We've just got to make it work for us."
Freshman guard Jaddan Simmons, who shot just 2-9 on Thursday, says the team is eager to put this game behind them.
“We play on Sunday, and I know it was a bad game but if we sit here and dwell on it that’s not going to help us," Simmons said. "We need to move on and learn from our mistakes."
ASU will get a quick turnaround from Thursday's performance as it will head back to Tempe to host San Diego on Sunday at 2 p.m. MST.
Reach the reporter at ltochter@asu.edu and follow @Leo_Toch on Twitter.
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