Jan. 17, 2004
LAS VEGAS - The San Diego State women's basketball team dropped its Mountain West Conference opener Saturday, falling to first-place UNLV, 76-58, at Cox Pavilion. With the loss, the Aztecs fell to 5-9 overall and 0-1 in conference play, while the Lady Rebels improved to 12-2 overall, 1-0 in the MWC and 9-0 at home in 2003-04.
Aztec freshman Michelle Elliott (Pasco, Wash.) led the team in scoring with 18 points, while sophomore Veronica Shaw (Phoenix, Ariz.) finished with a season-high 15 points on 6-for-6 shooting off the bench. Junior Candace Mattson (Alpine, Utah) added a career high nine rebounds and matched her season best for points with six in only 18 minutes of action.
SDSU forward Ashlee Dunlap (Los Angeles, Calif.), who ranked second on the team in points and first in rebounds, was limited to just two points and two rebounds in 13 minutes before fouling out.
UNLV took the early lead at 10-2 with the help of eight points, including two, three-pointers, by Infini Robinson. SDSU responded out of a 30-second timeout with four straight points on a jumper from the right baseline by Lindsey Casey (Odessa, Texas) and a pair of free throws by Dunlap to pull to within four points at 10-6.
The two sides then traded baskets, before UNLV went back up by eight at 18-10. The Aztecs got their first three-pointer of the game from Fritz at the 10:41 mark and followed that with a basket plus the foul by Shaw to get to within two points at 18-16.
The rest of the first half would go much the same way until the Lady Rebels went on a 16-5 run in the final six and a half minutes with the help of five points from the free-throw line to go into the locker room up, 42-27.
UNLV maintained the momentum into the second-half, opening with a 13-2 run to increase its lead to as many as 26 points at 55-29. While other teams would have given up at that point, the Aztecs did not, outscoring the Lady Rebels 15-0 to pull all the way back to within 11 at 55-44.
The 11 points would be as close as SDSU would get, however, as UNLV's lead hovered between 15 and 18 points for most of the rest of the game, eventually winning, 76-58.
Robinson, who entered the game shooting just 28 percent from the field, led UNLV in scoring with a career high 24 points, including six three-pointers. The Aztecs held the Lady Rebels' and the MWC's leading scorer RanDee Henry to just 10 points, more than nine under her scoring average entering the day.
San Diego State heads back home for its next round of conference play with two games next week starting with a 7 p.m. meeting Thursday against Wyoming and a Saturday match-up at 5 p.m. with Colorado State.