March 6, 2004
SALT LAKE CITY - In a preview of next week's first round Mountain West Conference championship game, the San Diego State women's basketball team closed out the regular season with a 63-51 loss at Utah Saturday afternoon. The Aztecs fell to 8-19 overall and 3-11 in the MWC, while Utah improved to 22-6 and 12-2 in league play, sharing the conference regular season title with New Mexico.
SDSU freshman Courtney Fritz (Newberg, Ore.) made four three pointers and had a team best 16 points. Classmate Michelle Elliott (Pasco, Wash.) added three more from beyond the arc and ended up with 13 points for her 20th game in double-figure scoring in 2003-04. Junior Candace Mattson (Alpine, Utah) had seven points and a career best 12 rebounds, becoming the first Aztec other than Ashlee Dunlap (Los Angeles, Calif.) to reach double-figures in rebounding in a game this year.
The two teams opened the game by trading the lead three times in the first five minutes with the Aztecs jumping out to a six-point advantage at 12-6 on a turnaround jumper by Mattson from the right block at the 13:50 mark.
SDSU maintained the six-point cushion three minutes later at 17-11 and added to it with the help of a 9-2 run to double-up on the Utes at 26-13, capped by a steal and lay-up by Veronica Shaw (Phoenix, Ariz.). Utah chipped away at its deficit with three unanswered straight baskets to move the score to 26-19 with under three minutes remaining until the half.
The Aztecs went into the locker room up by just five points at 26-21, shooting 46 percent from the field to Utah's 29 percent.
SDSU continued to be shutout offensively in the second half as Utah notched five straight points, before Dunlap got the Aztecs' first points on a lay-up at the 18:13 mark. The Utes retook the lead at 29-28 and went up by three before Michelle Strawberry (Corona, Calif.) equalized the game at 31 on a three-pointer.
Utah scored the next five baskets with three of them coming from Shona Thorburn to push out to an 11-point advantage at 42-31, as the Utes would go on to outscore the Aztecs 42-25 in the second half, winning by 12 points, 63-51.
Utah had four players in double-figure scoring, including team leader Kelsey Stireman, who ended up with 15 points.
San Diego State failed to go to the free-throw line until the 1:52 mark of the second half and missed on its only attempt, as the Utes made 22 trips to the charity stripe. The Aztecs matched its season high for three-pointers in a game with nine and eclipsed the school record for three-point attempts in a season with 402 (prev. 389 in 1998-99). SDSU also tied the school season record for most three-pointers made with 124.
SDSU travels to the 2004 Mountain West Conference Championship, slated to begin March 10, in Denver, Colo. The Aztecs, who have earned the No. 7 seed, will face No. 2 seed Utah, beginning at 6 p.m. MST at the Pepsi Center.
The two schools will meet next Wednesday for the first time ever in the five-year history of the Mountain West Conference Championship. The last time the teams faced in a conference tournament action was in 1997, when the Aztecs won the Western Athletic Conference tourney with a 56-50 victory over Utah.