Alissa Pili’s injury, and uncertain availability, clouds Utah’s frustrating win at Arizona State

TEMPE — “It kinds of feels like football,” an exasperated Utah women’s basketball coach Lynne Roberts said Friday night outside the team’s locker room at Desert Financial Arena.

It was not the best effort for Utah on the road against Arizona State — the Utes won, yes, by a 58-41 score to get their first win of Pac-12 action.

Roberts, though, wasn’t satisfied.

Her No. 15 Utes struggled offensively, shooting 37.5% as they continue to try and find their rhythm without Gianna Kneepkens, and with Isabel Palmer still missing in action due to injury.

Then, just two minutes before the end of the first half in Tempe, Utah star forward Alissa Pili went down hard after fighting for a rebound.

Roberts, in talking with officials, yelled out, “She got pulled down,” as Pili made her way to the bench after taking a minute to get up.

That’s where the football part comes in. For Utah women’s hoops, the injuries are piling up — it’s a sentiment that Utah football coach Kyle Whittingham was all too familiar with this past season — and it has the coach frustrated.

Roberts said Pili, who played 13 minutes against ASU and finished with eight points, four rebounds and one assist, was held out in the second half for precautionary reasons.

The coach also couldn’t provide any further injury details on Pili, while being unsure whether she would be ready when Utah faces Arizona on Sunday at the McKale Center.

“She wanted to play in that second half, but it’s not worth it,” Roberts said. “We’ve been stung by the injury bug and we’ve got to just get healthy. I have not had contact with the trainer yet, so hopefully she’ll be good, but I don’t know.”

Roberts was upset seeing Pili get hurt for a second straight game, after she briefly left Utah’s game last weekend at Colorado.

“It’s frustrating. Teams’ game plan is to beat the crap out of Pili and it’s frustrating because it’s the second game in a row she’s got hurt. And yeah, our officials need to protect her because just because she’s a big kid doesn’t mean she’s not getting the crap beat out of her,” Roberts said.

“And you know, as a league, we’ve got to do better. … We’ve got WNBA people here to watch her and she gets hurt because they’re just kicking the crap out of her. That’s not right. That’s got to get fixed.”

If Pili were to miss any extended amount of time, it would be a big blow for a Utah squad already dealing with more than its fair share of injuries.

“We know that’s going to be tough,” Roberts said, in facing Arizona next. “And hopefully we have Pili, but if not, we’ve got to figure it out. We just need to get healthy, we need our top three scorers. We didn’t have Pili, Kneepkens (who’s out with a season-ending foot injury) and with Palmer out, so it kind of feels like football.”

As for Friday night’s game, the Utes looked anything but a well-oiled machine, as the coach hoped she would be closer to seeing at this stage in the season — “we’ll get there, tonight was not good,” she said.

Playing a more complete game is paramount with teams like Arizona, No. 8 Stanford, No. 9 USC and No. 2 UCLA all on the schedule in the next two and a half weeks.

Key takeaways

Top performers: Kennady McQueen finished with 12 points and five assists for Utah, while Jenna Johnson added 10 points and six rebounds.

Key stretch: Arizona State used a 16-2 run to cut Utah’s lead to eight with 3:27 left in the third quarter, but the Utes answered that stretch by ending the quarter on a 12-3 run.

Pili exits early: Utah star forward Alissa Pili played just 13 minutes in the game, leaving with just over two minutes remaining in the first half after falling hard to the ground on a rebound attempt. She had eight points, four rebounds and an assist in limited minutes.

Shooting: Utah shot 37.5%, well below its average. The Utes held ASU to 27% shooting from the floor.

Rebounding: The Utes held a 52-34 edge on the boards and 17-13 on the offensive glass, which resulted in Utah owning a 12-5 advantage in second-chance points.

In a way, that basically made beating an unranked team like Arizona State “a must-win,” as Roberts put it, with how ultra competitive Pac-12 women’s basketball is.

Fortunately for Utah, the Utes came away with that win, even with the offensive struggles, which included an exorbitant amount of misses at the rim.

“We were 18 of 38 at the rim. We’ve got to knock down layups. We missed a lot,” Roberts said. “We left a lot of points out there on the board. The whole system is designed to get to the bucket and we were doing that and just choking. So we’ve got to clean that up.”

After a tight back-and-forth start, Utah went on an 11-0 run to end the first quarter to lead 18-7.

At one point, Arizona State went nearly a full quarter of game time — spanning the second and third periods — without a point.

When the Sun Devils finally broke that streak, they turned a once 22-point Utah edge into an 8-point game, after ASU made three straight 3-pointers, two from Adison Novosel, as part of a 16-2 run.

Utah countered one last time, ending the third quarter on a 12-3 spurt that included 5 points from Ines Vieira and a 3 from Kennady McQueen to effectively put the game away.

There were several moments where Utah looked the part of a top 15 team:

• Jenna Johnson ended up with 10 points, six rebounds and a blocked shot, helping spur the Utes early in the game. “Jenna carried us,” Roberts said.

• McQueen had a team-high 12 points on 5 of 10 shooting while adding six rebounds, five assists and a steal.

• Wisconsin transfer Maty Wilke also hit a key 3 early in the second half and had 7 points, even as she struggles with finishing her shots while adjusting to being the backup point guard.

• Utah also held a significant advantage in rebounding, 52-35, and owned a 12-5 edge in second-chance points.

• That all came as ASU shot just 27% from the floor.

It’s a win, yes. But it was a night where Utah left wanting more.

“I thought we were ready to play and we just kind of came out a little uninspired, which is concerning,” Roberts said. “Coming off a loss and have so much to play for and to play uninspired on the road in this league, it’s not going to get it done.”

What’s next?

Utah (11-3, 1-1 Pac-12) will stay in Arizona for the weekend, playing the Wildcats on Sunday (noon, Pac-12 Network) at McKale Center in Tucson, Arizona.

Arizona lost a one-point thriller against No. 5 Colorado on Friday.