Cougars Tough It Out Beat No. 11 Oregon State Women On Kunze Foul Shots In Rough Game

Bumps, bruises, bloody noses - the Washington State and Oregon State women’s basketball teams could have gone across the street to Martin Stadium and settled their Saturday afternoon contest on the football field.

The Cougars defeated the 11th-ranked Beavers 64-63 at Friel Court for their 10th win in their last 11 games. WSU had center Yvonne Kunze to thank for the win.

Kunze was fouled with 4.3 seconds left in the game as the Cougars were working the ball around for a final shot. With WSU trailing 63-62, Kunze calmly buried both ends of the one-and-one.

It was the third time in the last 63 seconds of a game that Kunze had gone to the foul line for a one-and-one with the Cougars trailing 63-62. She missed the front end of both opportunities the first two times.

“I didn’t think about the first two (when shooting the third),” Kunze said. “I was just trying to clear my head and not think about anything.”

With no timeouts remaining, Oregon State’s Boky Vidic heaved a desperation shot at the buzzer that sailed more in the direction of Corvallis, Ore., than at the basket.

“We called for a touchdown,” Oregon State coach Judy Spoelstra said. “We were trying to throw long, but they were preventing anything from getting deep and we were left with that desperation shot.”

The win moves Washington State’s record to 11-3 on the season and 3-1 in Pacific-10 Conference action. That record matches the best start of any team in Cougars history. The 1976-77 and 1977-78 teams, coached by Sue Durrant, each started 11-3.

Under Rhodes, the Cougars’ best start had been 10-4 in 1990-91, a season that saw WSU reach the NCAA tournament.

Oregon State, coming off a hard-fought 69-66 win against Washington at Seattle Thursday night, fell to 10-2, 2-1.

Spoelstra, who played at Washington State in 1979 and 1980 before transferring to Oregon State, said fatigue may have been a factor in the Beavers’ loss.

“This game was moved up to 1 p.m. for TV, and I’ll never agree again to do that. But still, we’re going to have to play better than that to win. We used so much energy to get back into this that we were just fatigued at the end.”

The Cougars started fast with the hot shooting of Jenni Ruff and Juli Wight and took a 42-33 halftime lead. Ruff had 18 points, Wight 13, and WSU shot 48.5 percent from the floor.

At the same time, Ruff played solid defense on OSU’s preseason All- American Tonja Kostic. Though Kostic finished with 22 points, she shot just 7 for 20 from the floor. Ruff and the collapsing Cougar defense held her to eight points in the first half and made it hard for her to get the ball.

Early in the second half though, Spoelstra was hit with a technical foul for disputing certain calls made and not made by the officials. By game’s end, Kostic and WSU’s Jade Hyett had at least one cotton ball jammed up a nostril to stop bloody noses.

Ruff made the two technical foul shots and Kunze hit a layup on the ensuing possession to give WSU a 46-33 lead. And that’s when OSU made its move.

The Beavers went on a 22-8 run over the next 9 minutes with the help of cold shooting by the Cougars and an aggressive 1-2-2 three-quarter-court press.

Oregon State took the lead at 55-54 with 10:10 to play and built it to 59-54 before the Cougars responded after a 6-minute scoring drought.

“The first 15 minutes of the game we were clicking,” WSU coach Harold Rhodes said. “I thought we did a great job of hanging in there and fighting back when points were harder to come by.”

Ruff and Kunze finished out the scoring for the Cougars. Ruff led the way with 28 points. Kunze and Wight each added 13.

Washington St. 64, Oregon St. 63

Oregon St. (10-2) - Kostic 7-20 8-8 22, Lelas 3-10 2-6 8, Mollerstrom 6-12 3-4 17, Vidic 1-2 3-4 5, Dionne 3-8 0-0 7, Staton 1-6 0-0 2, McAllister 0-0 0-0 0, McGrew 0-4 0-0 0, Lewis 1-1 0-0 2. Totals 22-63 16-22 63.

Washington St. (11-3) - Ruff 8-18 10-11 28, Erickson 3-14 0-1 6, Kunze 4-10 5-8 13, Hyett 0-1 0-0 0, Wight 5-11 0-0 13, Kerns 0-0 0-0 0, Evans 0-0 0-1 0, Wilder 2-8 0-0 4, Keith 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 22-62 15-21 64.

Halftime-WSU 42, OSU 33. 3-Point goals-OSU 3-6 (Mollerstrom 2-3, Dionne 1-3), WSU 5-14 (Wight 3-7, Ruff 2-3, Erickson 0-4). Fouled out-None. Rebounds-OSU 53 (Kostic 13), WSU 40 (Kunze 12). Assists-OSU 14 (Vidic 5), WSU 11 (Hyett 6). Total fouls-OSU 22, WSU 18. Technicals-OSU coach Spoelstra. A-589.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color)