Fresno State women’s basketball runs past San Jose State to reach MW Tournament championship

Fresno State has used San Jose State as a stepping stone this women’s basketball season, an overtime victory in January giving the Bulldogs sole possession of first place in the Mountain West Conference and a two-point win in February clinching a share of the regular-season championship.

While those first two games were close, the third was not.

The Bulldogs stomped up and down and all over the Spartans in the semifinals of the Mountain West Conference Tournament, breezing to a 94-68 victory Tuesday at the Thomas & Mack Center.

“I thought we had a good start,” coach Jaime White said, in something of an understatement, considering the Bulldogs blew the game open in those first 10 minutes with a 20-2 run.

“I thought our kids were really ready to play, focused, knocked down big shots, drew fouls and got to the free throw line. To have 20 assists means we were sharing the ball.”

Fresno State (25-6) advances to the Mountain West Tournament championship for the first time since 2017 and will face No. 2 Boise State (23-9), which defeated No. 3 Wyoming 79-71. The title game is set for 8 p.m. Wednesday with the tournament champ receiving the conference’s automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament.

“It’s a special moment,” guard Aly Gamez said. “This is all of our first time so it’s going to be very special for us and I’m very excited. That’s all I can think about right now.”

“I’m really excited,” freshman guard Haley Cavinder said. “But I just don’t think we’re done yet. We want to win it, and we’re not satisfied. We want to go out there and prove it.”

The Bulldogs in the title game will try to duplicate the first 10 minutes in their victory over No. 4 San Jose State (19-12), no doubt a tough task.

The Bulldogs did Bulldogs things in that opening quarter with the twin freshman guards Haley and Hanna Cavinder and Gamez moving the basketball and attacking the paint.

The difference early, though, was the 3-point shot and ultimately a decided edge in rebounding and the speed of the Bulldogs’ attack.

Haley Cavinder opened the game with a three and the Bulldogs raced away to a 28-11 lead in the opening quarter, scoring four times on layups and five times on threes.

Fresno State had struggled there for the past month – the Bulldogs had hit just 25.6% of their 3-point shots over their past seven games. But after Haley Cavinder knocked down a second, Maddi Utti knocked down a three from the right, Haley Cavinder hit a third and then Kendyll Kinzer buried a baseline three off an assist from center Brooke Walling.

The Bulldogs had five threes in the first quarter – more than they had in any of their past four games including a victory over Utah State in the quarterfinal round of the Mountain West Tournament.

“We knocked down some shots early, which was really beneficial to us,” Utti said.

That quick start had the Bulldogs so far in front that they still led by 17 at halftime (45-28) after struggling through an 0 of 8 stretch late in the second quarter, going without a field goal for almost seven and a half minutes.

Utti double-double

Utti, the Mountain West Player of the Year, had a double-double by halftime with 16 points and 10 rebounds. The 5-foot-11 forward finished with 22 points, 15 rebounds and six assists.

Haley Cavinder, the conference’s Freshman of the Year, drained three 3-pointers in scoring 11 points to go along with five assists in the first 20 minutes. She had 18 points, seven rebounds and seven assists.

Gamez also finished with 22 points, Hanna Cavinder had 14. And, for a second game in a row, the Bulldogs got strong minutes from their bigs including Walling, Kinzer and Lydia Friberg off the bench.

It was nothing like the first two matchups.

In the first meeting, the Bulldogs were down by as many as 12 points in the fourth quarter before rallying behind Hanna Cavinder, who scored 14 of her game-high 24 points in the final 15 minutes.

The freshman guard hit a floater in the lane to tie the score with 11 seconds remaining then started the overtime with a three that sent the Bulldogs on to a 85-76 victory.

In the second, San Jose State again had a lead late. But Wytalla Motta scored off a steal with 22 seconds remaining to tie the score and after a defensive stop and a timeout, Utti scored off a perfectly executed sideline out-of-bounds play with 3.7 seconds to go to give Fresno State a 78-76 win.

San Jose State this time could not contend with the speed of the Bulldogs’ attack, left to reach and lunge and foul.

Fresno State by the end of the third quarter had attempted a season-high 30 free throws and ended up 27 of 34 at the line.

“As hard as it is for Spartans to give credit to Bulldogs, I thought Fresno State played a terrific game,” San Jose State coach Jamie Craighead said.

“We couldn’t hit shots early, got in a little bit of a hole. We couldn’t seem to keep them in front of us — they got to the free throw line a ton of times and that makes it really difficult.”

Clovis West connection

The Spartans’ junior guards from Clovis West High, Megan Anderson and Danae Marquez, scored six and 14 points, respectively.

This story was originally published March 3, 2020 at 9:23 PM.