Early Tenacious Defense Paves Way for Rams Rout over San Diego State

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at Gonzaga

Three points allowed in the first quarter.

When you play inspired, some of the best things can happen on a basketball court. For the Colorado State women's basketball team, two straight weekends of encouraged, meaningful basketball shut out any doubt of Wednesday's ugly loss at Air Force.

Against the Falcons, the Rams scored just 14 points in the first half. Against San Diego State, they scored nearly as many in the first quarter alone while limiting the Aztecs to just three points in the frame. Not a bad way to bounce back.

The shot was a 3-pointer by Jada Lewis, which opened the scoring for the game. Within 48 seconds, McKenna Hofschild scored on a free throw, then a 2-point jumper to tie it up. San Diego State never led again as the Rams ran away with a 82-50 victory to improve to 5-5 in Mountain West play.

In fact, the Rams' defense limited the Aztecs to 18 points as their highest-scoring quarter. Meanwhile, aside from CSU's 12-point first quarter, it scored at least 22 points in each of the remaining frames.

"Saturdays in Moby are just downright sacred to me and, you know, the last two have been really special," head coach Ryun Williams said. "The sell out last Saturday, and then today was a special game with the pink out and we played really inspired both days. I thought our kids really came out with the right focus, the right mentality and executed what we needed to get done, mainly on the defensive end to start the game."

Sydney Mech and Marta Leimane set the tone out of the gate on defense for the Rams. Mech blocked the Aztecs' first shot attempt and Leimane obtained both of her steals within a minute about halfway through the first quarter.

She came out with a desire to impress on that end for her first career start, on which she came through. For the time being, Williams may have found something to tip defensive odds in his team's favor.

"Having Marty on the floor with Sydney, those are our two best defenders, arguably, so I think that was a huge difference," Williams said. "We had good foot speed, we had good reactions, we were active on the ball and got a lot of touches tonight."

McKenna Hofschild took care of the jumpstarting the offense in the second quarter. With 16 points in that frame alone, she was getting good looks almost whenever and wherever she wanted, whether it was her two 3-pointers, mid-range buckets or her last-second layup heading into halftime.

After the break, the rest of the team followed suit. In the first few minutes of the second half, Mech hit two jumpers, Sanna Strom hit a jumper and Hannah Ronsiek hit a 3 to increase their lead to 20, much to the delight of the Rams' bench.

Mech finished the third quarter with eight points without missing a single shot.

"We feed off of (Hofschild). I think it creates a lot of energy when she's going, all of us are kind of in a flow in different places," Mech said. "So if she's shooting the ball, we're out there cutting for her, we're cutting for other teammates or just picking it up on defense in places where maybe she's stepping up a little bit so I think it brings a lot of energy."

Mech tallied 14 total points, making her the lone double-digit scorer besides Hofschild, who notched her eighth double-double this season with 34 points and 10 assists. It was her third career 30-point triple double.

With a huge lead late, Williams was able to sub some of his reserves into the game, including Taylor Ray, whose battle with cancer inspired warmup shirts with her name on the back, which coaches and players wore prior to the game, which was a pink out.

Leimane, Ray's best friend, wore her name on the back of her jersey last Saturday for the annual Fight Like A Ram game. This Saturday, in front of 2,434 fans at Moby Arena, Ray entered the game with Leimane alongside her on the court.

Ray drew a foul, knocked down both free throws, then hit a corner 3 a couple minutes later. That meant something much more to Leimane.

"I was so happy, I was jumping out there," Leimane said. "I was so happy she got out there and she scored and I feel like everyone's happy. It warmed my heart."

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