On New Year’s Day, Cal women’s basketball fell to Arizona State by a final score of 56-53. Arizona State junior guard Taya Hanson led the way for the Sun Devils with 21 points, 4 rebounds, and 3 assists while Cal freshman forward Dalayah Daniels was the top performer for the Golden Bears with 20 points and 6 rebounds. Arizona State improves to 7-2 overall and 3-2 in the Pac-12 while Cal falls to 0-8 overall and 0-5 in the Pac-12.
“The game plan was to take care of the ball, box out, and finish,” Cal head coach Charmin Smith said after the game. “All those things equate to being tough. We wanted to be the tougher team. I think at one point we had only two turnovers and that was really good and I think we had nine at the half. But when we were taking care of the ball, it gives us a chance. In the second half we struggled with that. We let Hanson get free too many times.”
One interesting twist to this game was the fact that the game was delayed in its start time by 3.5 hours due to COVID-19 protocols. As a result, the game didn’t get started until 5:30 PM PST. The late start didn’t seem to faze Cal and if anything it appeared to help them as they got off to a much stronger start than expected.
With 4:51 to go in the 1st quarter, Cal led 7-5 as Dalayah Daniels was off to a hot start with 5 points and 2 rebounds on 2-3 shooting from the field. The Sun Devils had 0 points in the last 2:54, struggling to get going a bit on offense.
Cal would continue to build momentum, leading 18-11 at the end of the 1st quarter thanks to a 9-0 run. Cal couldn’t ask for a better start: Ugonne Onyiah (6 points), Leilani McIntosh (5 points), and Dalayah Daniels (5 points) were all in a nice groove. It was a very different looking Cal team from what we’ve seen earlier in the season.
Arizona State wouldn’t be down and out for long as they opened the 2nd quarter on a 6-0 run after a 3-pointer from Jamie Loera. Cal called for time up 18-17 with 8:11 to go in the half. Rather than letting Arizona State overtake them, Cal bounced back to lead 26-19 with 2:00 to go in the half. Daniels was up to 9 points, continuing to have a strong night. It was just a matter of finishing the half strong.
And finish the half strong Cal did as they would lead 28-19 at halftime. It was clear that Cal figured out something over the Christmas break. Daniels (9 points) and Mcintosh (8 points) led the way for the Bears while Hanson (9 points) was keeping the Sun Devils in the game.
Arizona State came out fighting in the 3rd quarter. With 3:30 to go, Cal led by just 4 points (36-32) as Hanson was up to 15 points. Daniels (13 points & 5 rebounds) and McIntosh (10 points) were in double figures for Cal. It was a battle in Tempe.
Arizona State would take the lead briefly, but thanks to a pair of clutch foul shots from Dalayah Daniels at the end of the quarter, Cal would lead 41-40 going into the 4th. She was up to 15 points on 7-7 shooting from the foul line. As for Arizona State, it wasn’t a shock that they had figured some things out being the gritty team that they always are. What did help them out was their offense waking up with 21 points, which is more than the number of points they scored in the entire first half.
With 7:24 to go, Arizona State led 45-41 after a 3-pointer from Hanson, who was up to 18 points. Cal called for time, hoping to regroup. With 5:10 to go, it looked like Arizona State would cruise to victory as they led 50-41 thanks to a 10-0 run to start the quarter.
Rather than fading away into the night, Cal continued to battle. With 3:06 to go, Arizona State led 52-46 calling for time with the hopes of finishing the Bears off. Cal had a bit of a pulse, but time was running out.
Thanks to a clutch bucket inside from Daniels, Cal trailed 52-50 with 58.9 to go. It was still very much a game. Katelyn Levings got a huge bucket to fall inside to give Arizona State a 54-50 lead, but then Daniels struck back with a 3-pointer to make it a one point game (54-53) with 41.5 seconds left.
“She’s a special player,” Smith said of Daniels. “She had 20 points. I’m disappointed that she took only 8 shots. We need her to shoot the ball more and be more aggressive. She’s one of those players who is capable of putting the ball in the basket and that’s what we need.”
After forcing a shot clock violation, Cal had the ball with around 7.5 to go. Cal had to go the full length of the floor and was almost able to get the game winner to drop, but Leilani McIntosh’s attempt fell a bit short. Arizona State got the ball back, was fouled with 0.8 seconds left, knocked down both free throws, and exited with a 56-53 win. Cal came really close to getting the win, but wasn’t able to finish the job.
One thing that was a bit controversial is the way the refs called that shot clock violation on Arizona State. Upon looking at the replay, it was clear that the Sun Devils didn’t get the shot off in time and that Cal should have been awarded 11.5 seconds or so. Instead, they left the 7.5 seconds or so on the clock for reasons that weren’t fully explained. I guess because the ball never hit the rim, but regardless, Cal was robbed out of approximately four seconds of time. Would it have made a difference? We’ll never know, but Charmin Smith was quick to say that she wasn’t going to spend much time dwelling on it.
“I was not aware of that,” Smith said. “I’ve been told that we were cheated a few seconds there. But either way I think we probably would have tried the same play. We got a really good look at the basket, Leilani she was cramping up the whole game and was coming up short on her shots. She gave us all she had and just a little bit short on that last play.”
While Cal is disappointed to still be winless in league, there’s a lot of positives that they can take from this game. They battled hard for the full 40 minutes on the road against a borderline Top 25 team and put themselves in a position to win the game at the end. With more efforts like this down the stretch of the season, they are bound to have at least a couple of games go their way.
"Just that I appreciate their fight and how they continue to stick with us, and we gave ourselves chances and some obstacles and hurdles and we keep trying to fight through them and show up the best that we can,” Smith said of what her message was to her team after the game. “And I also made a point that this is how it goes, right? You can put all you can into it and come out on the other side with a loss. It was a game in which both teams were fighting. ASU was down several times to us. We let them come back and catch up and they let us come back and gave us a shot at the end.”
Up next for Cal is a road game at #6 Arizona on Sunday. That game will tipoff at 11:00 AM PST on Pac-12 Networks.
