UCLA
Washington
Women's Hoops Downs Washington
June 21, 1999 | Women's Basketball
January 29, 1999
LOS ANGELES - Faced with the prospect of its first conference loss, No. 8 UCLA picked up its defense in the second half and came up with one of its best offensive showings of the year.
The Bruins held Washington to 17 percent shooting in the second half and overcame the loss of star Maylana Martin to beat Washington 90-53 Thursday night.
With Martin sidelined by recurring headaches, the Bruins trailed at halftime 34-32. But they came out strong in the second half and opened a 55-42 lead as the Huskies hit only two of their first 21 shots.
UCLA (16-4, 8-0) then capitalized on a string of fastbreak layups created by an aggressive defense to put the game away.
"We definitely picked up our defense in the second half and it helped our offense a lot," said LaCresha Flannigan, who scored all 24 of her points in the second half. "When we need to pick up our defense, we can. We feel our defense can create a lot of offense, like it did tonight."
Marie Philman added a career-high 24 points for the Bruins, who were also without Janae Hubbard for much of the second half because of foul trouble. Hubbard scored 12 points, but fouled out with 11:22 left.
"Defensively, we took it to another level and that was the difference," said UCLA coach Kathy Olivier. "We felt like we had to do it to get control of the game, especially with Maylana out and Janae in foul trouble."
UCLA concentrated on stopping Washington stars Jamie Redd and Amber Hall.
Redd, the leading scorer in Huskies' history, was held to 10 points and was 2-for-15 from the field. Hall scored 13 points on 4-of-10 shooting and had 12 rebounds.
"The idea was to stop those two," Olivier said. "We felt like Redd and Hall are their two emotional leaders, and everybody else on that team feeds off them."
Washington (9-8, 5-3) was undone by its shooting after halftime. The Huskies made only 7 of 41 shots in the final 20 minutes.
"It was probably a lack of focus and intensity in the second half. We didn't have any togetherness," Redd said. "We killed ourselves. UCLA is a great team, but we did it to ourselves tonight."
The Huskies shot only 26 percent for the game.
"We certainly didn't shoot the ball, but we didn't play defense or do much of anything in the second half," said Washington coach June Daugherty. "We lost our poise in the second half, offensively and defensively. We definitely need to regroup."
