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Sunday, March 18
Vermillion, SD
12 p.m. MT

Colorado State

49
at
74

South Dakota

Tvrdy_Hannah_South_Dakota_WNIT_3-18-18
Photo by: Aaron Packard/USD

Rams fall at South Dakota, 74-49, in round two of Postseason WNIT

3/18/2018 3:58:00 PM | Women's Basketball

Senior guard Hannah Tvrdy leads all scorers with 21 points in final collegiate game as Rams close season with 21-12 record

VERMILLION, S.D. – The Colorado State women's basketball team fell to the South Dakota Coyotes, 74-49, in round two of the Postseason WNIT on Sunday afternoon from the Sanford Coyote Sports Center.
 
Senior guard Hannah Tvrdy closed her collegiate career with a 21-point, 8-for-12 shooting performance to lead all scorers. Junior forward Annie Brady and junior guard Sofie Tryggedsson each finished with eight points, with Brady adding seven rebounds. Colorado State (21-12) finished behind South Dakota (28-6) in field goal percentage, 43 percent to 38 percent, and was outrebounded on the offensive glass, 10-1, and by 13 overall (39-26 USD).
 
Colorado State's only lead was in the first minute of the game, as Brady scored the first basket for either team on Sunday. Both teams started 3-for-6 from the floor, but the Rams' offense stagnated over the latter stretch of the first quarter and the Coyotes built a 24-12 lead heading to the second. South Dakota extended that momentum in to the second quarter, taking leads of 30-12 and 36-17 as the Rams only had four points in the second quarter for much of the period's duration. However, Tvrdy closed the half with back-to-back three to help the Rams trim the deficit to 40-22 by halftime.
 
CSU made the game close in the third quarter with early hot shooting, making each of its first seven shots in that period. Four of those were three-pointers, as freshman guard Jordyn Edwards and Tryggedsson drained two of those apiece over the first four minutes of the second half to cut the USD lead to 45-38. After Edwards' second three, Tvrdy hit a layup to cut the defcit to 45-40, but the Rams did not score for the last 5:14 of the third quarter and fell behind 55-40 heading to the fourth.
 
CSU converted on only three more field goal attempts for the remainder of the game, an Austgulen three and a pair of Tvrdy layups. Those three field goals helped reduce a 23-point deficit back to 15 with 4:51 to go, but CSU did not make another shot for the rest of the game as the Rams slipped behind to the eventual 74-49 final score.

IN THEIR WORDS
Colorado State head coach Ryun Williams
"They shot it really well, obviously, and we just seemed slow today. We seemed like we had no legs today. We didn't move well and we were just way too late getting to shooters. Once they got a few balls going down it became contagious for South Dakota. When you shoot that many threes and you shoot that well, you stretch that lead pretty quick, and we didn't match it offensively. Again, we missed seven layups in that first half. We just couldn't keep up with them offensively. Defensively we just didn't have a lot of the same pop that we did all year."
 
On his evaluation of how the team played this season:
"This team did a great job. We obviously had our limitations. We had our deficiencies, mainly scoring the basketball. I thought we overcame a lot of those deficiencies this year to get 21 wins. You've got to give our team a lot of credit for finding ways to score enough and hold teams down. That's what this group has been so good at doing most of the year. We had great leadership – Tvrdy had a big-time year and Stine and Veronika played their tails off – so I thought we got about what we thought we could get out of them. Any year you go into, you want to try to maximize your potential. I think we did that with this group, and I'm proud of the season that they had."
 
NOTES
- Colorado State finishes the season 21-12, marking the program's fifth consecutive season with 20 or more wins.
- Colorado State finished with an average of 57.6 points allowed per game, ranking as the fourth-best scoring defense in a single season in program history.
- CSU ended the year with a field goal percentage defense of .351, its fifth-lowest in a single season in program history.
- CSU's final three-point field goal percentage defense was .273, the Rams' third-best in a single season in program history.
- The Rams made 213 three-point field goals in 2017-18, tied for the seventh-most in a single season in program history.
- The Rams blocked 128 shots in 2017-18, which ranks as the second-most in a single season in program history.
- Senior guard Stine Austgulen finished the season shooting 66-for-154 from beyond the three-point arc for a .429 three-point field goal percentage. That ranks sixth on CSU's all-time single-season list.
- Austgulen finishes her career shooting 147-for-380 (.387) from beyond the arc to place fifth on CSU's all-time career three-point field goal percentage list.
- Austgulen's 147 career three-point field goals made rank as the eighth-most by a single player in program history.
- Senior guard Hannah Tvrdy scored 10 points or more in 13 of her final 14 games. Four games over that stretch were 20-plus-point games.