There will be nights this season when the USF women’s basketball team will dazzle fans with a high-flying and entertaining peformance, However, Wednesday’s game with visiting Jacksonville was not one of them.
The Bulls pulled away in the fourth quarter to secure a 75-57 victory to improve to 4-2, but head coach Jose Fernandez was succinct about how he viewed the evening.
”i thought the game was never going to end,” he said. “I don’t know about you guys, but that had to be a tough game to do on TV, ESPN+. It was just an ugly basketball game.
”There wow 51 fouls between the two teams. That was very uncharacteristic of us. We didn’t adjust to how the game was officiated.”
Through it all, guard Vittoria Blasigh stood out. She scored 24 points — including 19 in the fourth quarter — to go along with a career-best 10 rebounds. Sammie Puisis had 19 points.
but the teams combined to shoot 47 free throws to go with 33 turnovers.
That’s a recipe for a long night.
”When we run our offense, we’re really, really good,” Fernandez said. ‘But when we deviate … I shouldn’t have to call a play every time down the court and set our guys up. At the end of the second quarter, I let ‘em play. We were in transition and we threw the ball all over the place. We almost knocked a cheerleader down, almost hit someone sitting courtside … not good.”
The Bulls return to action Sunday at 1 p.m. against 22nd-ranked Louisville at the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando.