Three numbers that tell the story: No. 22 Utah women's basketball falls to No. 12 Kansas State
The No. 22 ranked Utah women's basketball suffered their first conference loss and first loss at home on Wednesday night to No. 12 Kansas State, 71-47 Utah was outplayed from the jump and there was nothing they could do to get back into it.
Here are three numbers that tell the story:
47: This is the lowest amount of points that Utah has scored in a game since last season when they lost at home versus Oregon State, 58-44. Utah scored the same amount versus Washington as well and they lost that game as well. Heading into tonight, Utah was averaging 79.2 ppg so that shows just truly how bad of a performance it was for the Utes. But Utah is a solid team when it comes to rebounding from a bad loss, both times last season they scored under 50 points they met or exceeded their season average. Utah has the veteran leadership to be able to shake this loss off and move on to the next game.
30% and 15.8%: That is Utah's shooting percentage from the field and the three-point line tonight. The thing is, Utah had good looks for a good chunk of the night but in the words of former Utah men's basketball coach Jim Boylen, "Ball didn't go in the hoop." While missing shots is very much the thing you don't want in basketball, every team is going to miss some each night. Utah usually does a great job at shaking off those misses and just thinking about the next shot. But there was just something tonight that felt like as soon as the first few misses happened, the team just started to overthink, and that led to more and more misses. Gianna Kneepkens was 4-9 from the field tonight, Maye Toure was 2-12 from the field and Jenna Johnson was 2-8, those are numbers you won't frequently see from these levels of players. As for the three-point shooting, Utah has been shooting 0.377 from the three-point line and has been making on average 10 of them a game. The 15.6% that they shot tonight was so unlike Utah, players were passing up open looks to try and force it inside, and again it looked like they were afraid to shoot. Utah was 3 of 19 from the three-point line tonight. And that's another number you probably won't see from this team again.
8: That is Utah's assist total for tonight's game. Another stat that Utah usually dominates with around 18 per game, was reduced so heavily that even Ines Vieira who is top five in the Big 12 in assists was reduced to nothing tonight. This stat goes hand in hand with the poor shooting, when Utah is on a roll that assist number goes up as players on the team are willing to distribute the ball to whoever is hot. But when no one is hot, they are looking to be the ones who can get hot and get things rolling. This offense thrives on ball movement and assists on buckets, but it's hard to assist on baskets when nothing is going in the hoop.
https://247sports.com/college/utah/article/three-numbers-that-tell-the-story-no-22-utah-womens-basketball-falls-to-no-12-kansas-state-243785733/