UAA women’s basketball falls short of a comeback in loss to Central Washington

Coming off three straight wins and looking for a season sweep of a fourth straight Great Northwest Athletic Conference opponent, the University of Alaska Anchorage women’s basketball team fell short in a 72-65 loss to Central Washington at the Alaska Airlines Center on Saturday night.

“We got within striking distance and every time that we’d get an opportunity to make something happen, it was just little things,” UAA head coach Ryan McCarthy said. “Instead of sending the amount of players we normally send to the offensive glass, one or two would forget it. Or we’d come down and try to run a play that we’ve run a million times and one or two players would forget the play.”

He didn’t believe the team was as focused as it should’ve been and going against a Wildcats team that can and did get hot offensively, that lack of focus proved costly in the clutch moments late in the game.

“Central is a really good team and they have two elite guards,” McCarthy said. “They can do this to anyone in our league. They’re good enough to beat anybody so this isn’t necessarily a bad loss, it’s a good opportunity for us to learn.”

Central Washington shot 53.2 percent from the field and 42.1 percent from 3-point range to UAA’s 39.1 percent from the field and 33.3 percent from behind the arc The Wildcats also outrebounded the Seawolves 40-26, with the majority of their boards on the defensive end.

“They made plays and we didn’t,” McCarthy said. “They made the hustle plays and we didn’t. Anytime you get outrebounded by 14, I think it shows what team played harder. We can’t look ourselves in the mirror and say we did.”

UAA was down by as many as 17 points early in the third period but was able to whittle the deficit down to five points late in the fourth quarter but couldn’t quite close the gap.

“They showed some toughness,” McCarthy said. “I wish they would’ve done it all game but they showed how good they can be and it just wasn’t consistent.”

The leading scorers for the Seawolves were senior Vishe’ Rabb with 15 points, junior Senya Rabouin with 13 and junior Tori Hollingshead with 10.

“Hopefully our team can learn from this,” McCarthy said. “They’re a young group and aren’t very experienced in this particular situation and it’s got to be something that we regroup from heading into next week.”