The Idaho women’s basketball team’s aggressive play paid off against UC-Santa Barbara as the Vandals beat the Gauchos 64-42 Sunday at the Memorial Gym.
“I thought we executed, did a good job tonight,” Idaho coach Jon Newlee said. “We knew they were going to set a lot of ball screens and so the game plan was to really get through them and make sure the perimeter drivers didn’t get to the rim.”
The Vandals scored 19 points in the first quarter.
This is the first time senior post Ali Forde has joined the team for the season opener.
Forde was a two-sport athlete for Idaho, playing basketball and volleyball until this year. She stepped down from the volleyball team after deciding to focus on basketball.
“Ali was dominant on both ends tonight and it was great having her for the first game of the year,” Newlee said.
UCSB freshman Kali Jones, a 6-foot-3-inch post, was shut down by Forde, scoring just one point for the Gauchos.
Forde said she is happy to focus on one sport for her senior year.
“It’s nice to have been able to get out there for basketball preseason and do my work in the offseason and get better,” Forde said. “It’s helped a lot.”
Forde finished with 14 rebounds during her 24 minutes of play. “We’re a great offensive team,” Forde said. “I feel like we’ll always be a great offensive team. This week we’ve been really practicing our defense. It’s one thing we really need to focus on. Last season other teams did score a lot of points and we’re working on shutting that down this year, and I think we did that today.”
Sophomore post Geraldine McCorkell led the Vandals with four assists and Idaho freshman guard Taylor Pierce had 10 points with three assists, down slightly from the 11 points she scored against Lewis-Clark State College in Idaho’s exhibition win Nov. 6.
“Our focus this week was stopping their guards and that’s what we did,” Pierce said. “To win a game by that much and not have the best shooting night for our guards was really impressive.”
The Vandals will play California State-Northridge at 6 p.m. Friday at the Memorial Gym.
Tess Fox can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @tesstakesphotos