Bulldogs can’t get to paint or past Wyoming, end regular season with second loss in three games

Fresno State women’s basketball coach Jaime White tried to get the Bulldogs into tournament mode, pushing a game against Nevada then a trip to Wyoming to end the regular season before heading to Las Vegas as all part of the deal.

Nevada was a tournament game. Wyoming was a tournament game.

“We’re trying to get our kids to think in that way going into the Mountain West Tournament,” White said, before the Bulldogs hit the road.

The Bulldogs didn’t quite get there, though, and on Thursday absorbed their second loss in three games, a 64-55 setback to the Cowgirls at the Arena-Auditorium in Laramire, Wyo.

More concerning, perhaps, Wyoming might have exposed the Bulldogs (23-6, 16-2 in the MW) as they head into the tournament as the No. 1 seed – they open with a noon quarterfinal on Monday at the Thomas & Mack Center against the winner of Sunday’s No. 8-No. 9 matchup.

Wyoming (16-11, 12-6) was able to keep the Bulldogs’ guards out of the paint, staying in front of the basketball and helping to cut off drives to the basket, particularly early in the game. Without the easy baskets that fueled its run to start conference play, Fresno State struggled.

The Bulldogs had dominated paint scoring in their conference games – they had been outscored there in just one of their first 17 games and six times had outscored opponents in the paint by 20 or more points.

But at Wyoming they attempted only nine layups in 32 first-half shots and 23 in 64 overall, forcing them to take jump shots.

That was a problem. The Bulldogs hit only 4 of 18 shots from the 3-point line (22.2%) against the Cowgirls, and over their past six games have hit better than 30% of their threes just once.

That’s 4 of 22 against UNLV (18.2%), 7 of 28 against San Jose State (25%), 6 of 14 at Utah State (42.%) 4 of 21 at Air Force (19%), 4 of 14 (28.6%) against Nevada and 4 of 18 at Wyoming, just 29 of 117 overall (24.8%).

Fresno State hit just 34.4% of its shots overall, and the 55 points were the fewest it has scored this season.

Hanna Cavinder led the Bulldogs with 19 points and Maddi Utti had a double-double with 15 points and 11 rebounds, but the Fresno State bench was outscored 31-0 and with few easy looks could not keep pace with the Cowgirls.

This story was originally published February 27, 2020 at 11:26 PM.