Jan. 4, 2005

Final Stats

The University of Denver women's basketball team completed the non-conference portion of its schedule with a 67-47 loss to Colorado State tonight at Moby Arena. Denver falls to 2-10 on the season while CSU improves to 8-4.

"They played with a lot of confidence tonight and that's a quality that we need to develop," head coach Pam Tanner said. "We don't quite have the killer mentality on the court right now."

"As much as this is frustrating, it's a new season when we start the conference season. We have a chance to do some good things in the league."

After trailing by 22 points to start the second half, Denver picked up its scoring pace with a balanced attack, but the Pioneers could not close the gap. CSU led by as many as 27 points before Denver surged to close the gap to 20 at the buzzer (67-47).

Senior guard Tasha Jones (San Antonio, Texas) and freshman forward Sara Benham (Muleshoe, Texas) led the Pioneers with 10 points apiece. Freshman guard Jennifer Whetten (Evergreen, Colo.) added eight points and freshman point guard Brooke Meyer (Denver, Colo.) had seven points. Melissa Dennett led all scorers with 15 points, and Lindsay Thomas added 12 points and 11 rebounds.

In the first half, Denver fell behind 10-0 as Melissa Dennett scored eight straight points. Tasha Jones scored the Pioneers first bucket at the 15:00 mark. Denver trailed by as many as 22 points (29-7) before mounting a 9-0 run to end the half with a score of 29-15. Denver struggled from the field, shooting just 20.7 percent, and gave up 11 turnovers.

Denver shot just 30 percent from the field, and 18 percent from long range. The Rams outrebounded the Pioneers 56-32.

Denver will be on the road again to begin Sun Belt Conference play at Louisiana-Lafayette on Saturday, Jan. 8, 2005 at 3:45 p.m.