This post was updated March 23 at 9:34 p.m.<\/p>\n
The duel was over before Pistol Pete could draw his weapon.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t help that he barely brought any bullets.<\/p>\n
And couldn\u2019t hit his mark.<\/p>\n
There was not enough room for both programs in the Sweet Sixteen, so No. 1 seed UCLA (33-1, 18-0 Big Ten) sent No. 8 seed Oklahoma State (24-10, 12-6 Big 12) riding off into the sunset 87-68 Monday at Pauley Pavilion while punching its own ticket to Sacramento.<\/p>\n
Though halftime seemed to resurrect the Cowgirls, their faster tempo still was not enough to overcome the drag of having one foot in the grave.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma State limited UCLA to a 6-for-17 performance from the field in the third quarter after shooting 18-for-33 in the first half. And the Bruins\u2019 perimeter shooting went from 6-for-10 after the first two quarters to a 1-for-5 showing in the third.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Cowgirls shot 9-for-16 in the second quarter and 9-for-17 in the third \u2013 and limited their third quarter turnovers to one after totaling nine in the first half.<\/p>\n
But the Cowgirls\u2019 second shot proved to be no silver bullet \u2013 the Bruins still led 64-47 after three frames.<\/p>\n
Senior center Lauren Betts did not make her first third-quarter field goal until just 3:50 remained, but she still managed to finish the period with 11 points, making three of her five attempts.<\/p>\n
The Cowgirls could never contain the 6-foot-7 center for long \u2013\u00a0not by lasso nor gunpowder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Betts\u2019 35 points marked a career high \u2013 coming off 78.9% shooting from the field \u2013 and tossed in nine rebounds and five assists for good measure.<\/p>\n
The tallest Cowgirl to take the court Monday was forward Praise Egharevba at 6-foot-3, but she played just 14 minutes.\u2019<\/p>\n
From tipoff, Oklahoma State was just too slow on the draw.<\/p>\n
It took 2:46 minutes before the Cowgirls got on the scoreboard in the first quarter, and it would take another 2:48 until they made their next basket from the field.<\/p>\n
The Cowgirls\u2019 six-point first quarter, a product of 2-for-16 shooting, ended in a 4:26 scoring drought that left them in a 15-point hole \u2013 one they could never quite dig themselves out of.<\/p>\n
After UCLA shot 5-for-15 from deep against No. 16 seed California Baptist on Saturday, it got back to form against Oklahoma State \u2013 shooting 7-for-7.<\/p>\n
Freshman guard Lena Bilic made both of her 3-point shots, and graduate student guard Gianna Kneepkens improved from her 1-for-5 perimeter shooting Saturday to a 3-for-6 showing Monday to tally 15 points on the night. <\/p>\n
Achol Akot scored 28 points against No. 9 seed Princeton on Friday, and once again led the Cowgirls with 23 \u2013 but the forward just could not be on the floor come high noon.<\/p>\n
Akot earned her third personal foul with 8:31 in the third, her fourth with 8:32 in the fourth, and fouled out with 24 seconds left before the Cowgirls took their last breath.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma State couldn\u2019t conquer the West.<\/p>\n
Next, UCLA will be tasked with defending Sacramento against the Midwest\u2019s No. 4 seed Minnesota. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This post was updated March 23 at 9:34 p.m. The duel was over before Pistol Pete could draw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[121,123,122],"class_list":["post-233677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}