It’s the defense that wins championships, at least the Idaho State women proved that last season on the way to a Big Sky title.
And while Bengals head coach Seton Sobolewski wants his team to push the ball and score more points this season, Saturday’s game against Colorado State Pueblo proved the ISU women haven’t forgotten how to defend since last February’s game in the NCAA tournament.
The Idaho State Bengals built a 21-point first-half lead and cruised to a 50-24 victory in an exhibition matchup against Colorado State-Pueblo Saturday afternoon in Reed Gym.
ISU held the CSU-Pueblo ThunderWolves, an NCAA Division II team from the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference, to 19.5 percent shooting from the floor and forced the ThunderWolves into 24 turnovers.
“Defense is our staple, so we wanted to kind of make a statement in our first game,” said senior forward Ashleigh Vella, who finished tied for a game-high 10 points and three assists.
Under Sobolewski, the Bengals have utilized a suffocating, man-to-man defensive system that’s aggressive and constantly applies pressure.
The ThunderWolves had five points through the first five minutes of the game, but from there, CSU-Pueblo could only muster 19 in the final 35 minutes.
“I’m very pleased with our effort. Very, very pleased,” Sobolewski said.
On one side of the floor, the 2012 version of the ISU Bengals looked much like the one that rolled through the Big Sky with a 14-2 conference mark.
But offensively, the Bengals themselves struggled, hitting 20 of their 60 field goal attempts. The second half, in particular, ISU seemed inconsistent putting up 15 points in the final 20 minutes.
“I don’t know if it was a case of the individual parts weren’t working well, meaning that we had open shots but we didn’t make them,” Sobolewski said. “Or was it the offense and the spacing, and we weren’t getting enough good shots.”
Senior forward Jessa Jeppesen, who finished with six points, two rebounds and a steal, added, “In the second half, we were just slow.”
Despite an offense that struggled, the Bengals built a big lead and never let CSU-Pueblo string together any kind of run to get back into the game.
“I think offensively, we’re trying to do a couple more things this year,” Vella said. “We’re trying different ways of scoring. It’ll take a little time but we’ll get that chemistry back.”
For the ThunderWolves, Katie Nehf was the leading scorer with nine points.
Lindsey Reed finished with 10 points and seven rebounds. Abyee Maracigan, a senior guard, led the Bengals on the glass with nine rebounds in 18 minutes of time on the floor.
For the game, all 14 ISU players who dressed played and 10 scored.
“I think for an exhibition it was a good start,” Vella said. “We learned some things from it and now we just move on.”
The Bengals’ regular season begins Friday in Manhattan, Kan., against Kansas State. And after taking on Kansas next Sunday, ISU is back in Reed Gym to play Air Force Academy Nov. 17.