The Northwest Nazarene women's basketball team came out trying to match No. 1 UAA's speed and intensity with fast breaks and a full-court press of their own Thursday at the Alaska Airlines Center. Its early success didn't last long.
After a slow start, the Seawolves cruised to an 82-53 Great Northwest Athletic Conference win.
"We did a pretty good job of just breaking their press and executing and punishing it," UAA coach Ryan McCarthy said. "I think that when teams press us, we don't necessarily want to break the press, we're trying to punish it and create quick, easy shot opportunities for us."
The quick, easy shots came in abundance for the Seawolves (27-1, 14-1 GNAC) — UAA finished with 31 assists and 15 fast-break points.
Kiki Robertson tallied 10 of the assists to move into first at UAA with 462 career assists, surpassing Seawolf Hall of Famer Allegra Stoetzel, who had 460 from 1992-96. Eight of the junior point guard's assists came in the first half.
On the scoring front, Megan Mullings and Jenna Buchanan each had 14 points and Alysha Devine and Jessica Madison each put in 13. Mullings only missed one shot from the field and Buchanan went 4 of 6 from 3-point land.
Ellie Logan chipped in 13 points for Northwest Nazarene (8-13, 6-9). Taylor Simmons added seven points, five assists and six steals for the Crusaders.
NNU kept the game close early, and trailed only 11-10 seven minutes into the first quarter against Division II's top ranked team. Then, UAA used a 12-0 run to finish the quarter, capped by a Devine 3-pointer.
The Seawolves expanded their lead to 52-20 at halftime.
"I thought our ladies did a really good job in the first half of defending," McCarthy said. "Our goal was to hold them to 10 points every quarter … We did it in the first and second quarters."
UAA lost its momentum coming out of the locker room and was outscored 20-17 in the third quarter. The Seawolves also allowed the Crusaders to get to the free-throw line 24 times to nine for UAA — and the Seawolves still won by 29 points.
"In the second half, we kind of lost the momentum we had in the first half," said UAA guard Keiahnna Engel, who finished with eight points, nine assists and six rebounds. "We started off slow, but that's something we can work on and get better. We want to be a team that still has stuff to work on — we don't want to play our best basketball right now."
Despite the few second-half blunders, UAA dominated the game in almost every facet. The Seawolves won the battle in the paint 45-22, and outshot the Crusaders 36.4 percent to 15.4 percent from the 3-point line.
To top it off, the win came against McCarthy's former team. McCarthy played basketball at NNU from 2002-06, and coached the NNU women's team in various facets from 2007-12 before coming to UAA.
"It's interesting because I recruited three or four of those players on that team, and met their families and sat in their living rooms and convinced them that Northwest Nazarene was the best school in the country," McCarthy said. "And now I'm here and I want nothing more than to beat them.
"I'm about winning, so to beat anybody is always a good feeling, but to be able to beat them feels really good, but only for me because we've struggled to beat them in the past. That's probably the team in the GNAC that we've struggled with the most over the past four years."
UAA returns to the court Saturday to host Central Washington (15-7, 8-6) at 2 p.m. at the Alaska Airlines Center. The Seawolves beat the Wildcats 66-42 on Jan. 14.