TEMPE, Ariz. -- The 74-55 final score and 29-lead at one point of its first NCAA Tournament game against Ohio satisfied the Arizona State women's basketball team.
Now it's on to accepting the result, a ticket to the round of 32, without making too much of the final margin and the ease of the Saturday's victory at Wells Fargo Arena.
"Our team is hard on ourselves," ASU head coach Charli Turner Thorne said. "We are not happy with our rebounding after this game, at all. We're happy with our shooting percentage but not our turnovers. We probably should have moved the ball better than we did. There's a lot we can look at and get better for Monday night."
The victory earned the third-seeded Sun Devils a 6 p.m. matchup against No. 11-seed Arkansas-Little Rock, which earlier Saturday upset sixth-seeded Texas A&M 69-60.
When ASU was at its best it looked like a formidable team moving forward, using pressure defense to find transition opportunities. Creating out of the post also was a focus, and the Sun Devils shot 56 percent whe it was all over.
"Our main focus was going from the weak side in and seeing the post," guard Katie Hempen said. "Pretty much, we knew they were going to, you know, kind of focus on (doubling the post). We had to skip-inside and inside-out, and that's what helped us in the game."
Hempen, the team's second-leading scorer at 11.5 points per game heading into Saturday, scored a career-high 23 points, thanks in part to five 3-pointers.
Then there were the nitpicks. The turnover edge went in favor of the Sun Devils, but only by an 18-17 margin. The rebounding against an small-ball Ohio team that ran out five perimeter players was even.
UP NEXT
Who: (3) ASU vs. (11) Arkansas Little-Rock
When: 6 p.m. Monday
Where: Wells Fargo Arena
Quick peek: In upsetting sixth-seeded Texas A&M, Arkansas Little-Rock guard Taylor Gault scored 25 points, including five 3s, and forward Kiera Clark came off the bench to score 22 and grab 12 rebounds.
The Sun Devils, after not playing for two weeks, felt out their opponent. Ohio took a 8-6 lead at the 16-minute mark before ASU's press and transition kicked in. The Bobcats went scoreless for nearly six minutes as the Sun Devils extended the lead to 19-8.
The Bobcats, known as deep threat in taking 3s on 46 percent of their shot attempts this season, needed seven long-range attempts before knocking in two consecutive with less than five minutes remaining in the first half.
By the end of the game, the Bobcats shot 37 percent and went 4-of-16 from deep.
"I thought our defense looked fantastic at times against a team that's done a great job of taking care of the ball," Turner Thorne said. "They don't pass a lot. They take you one-on-one a lot. They couldn't get to the rim and then they couldn't find teammates, and that was just -- our team was working really hard."
ASU led 41-25 at halftime, its largest lead to that point.
The Bobcats traded baskets for the first five minutes of the second half, but over the next five minutes the Sun Devils put together a 16-0 run to build a 66-37 lead with 9:56 to play. Ohio responded soon after with a 13-0 run to cut the lead to 16 with three minutes to play.
ASU scored two field goals in the final 9:26, and Turner Thorne came back with her starters, which wasn't her preference.
The Sun Devils' Sophie Brunner and Arnecia Hawkins, who scored in double-figures with 14 and 12, respectively, each scored layups in the final two minutes to put any hope of a Bobcat comeback on ice.
"These guys are the reason that we are here," Turner Thorne said of her starting unit. "They got us here. And they were very frustrated that we weren't scoring and letting the other team score, and they wanted to go back in. So I put them back in for a little bit. They weren't always doing the right thing, either, but we got up almost 30 and we let up. And honestly in the Pac-12 it didn't happen very often. I thought we refocused well."
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