The Washington State women’s basketball team walked away from this weekend satisfied with the improvements it has made and showcase in ability. The Cougars (12-6, 3-4) split a pair of games this weekend, taking down no. 25 USC 73-61 Friday and dropping a stinger to No. 17 UCLA 75-73 Sunday.

WSU ran away from the Trojans with a 42-23 second half to nab its first win of the year over a ranked opponent and rallied from an 11-point fourth quarter deficit against the Bruins to get a potential-game tying shot off at the buzzer before eventually falling.

USC

The second unit was having trouble containing the Trojans physical post players during the first half, and as a result, WSU trailed 36-23 with 3:21 left in the second quarter. That all changed when freshman forward and team leading scorer Borislava “Bobi Buckets” Hristova substituted back into the game at the 2:35 mark of the second frame.

Hristova, who was held to 10 points in the team’s previous game against No. 14 Arizona State, notched 21 points Friday night against USC on 8-14 shooting. Seven of those points came in the third period and a her scoring output was at the forefront of a reloaded team energy level that raced passed the Trojans, outscoring them 42-23 in the second half.

“I think that the key there was that her teammates were moving and setting good screens,” WSU Head Coach June Daugherty said. “There was really good timing tonight with moving the basketball. So we put her in a position where she was a little bit more comfortable to score.”

USC led 38-31 at the break and while it appeared that the Cougs might again met overmatched from a physicality standpoint against another ranked team, Daugherty implored her team to ramp up the intensity on the floor from where it was in the first half.

“A huge thing for us has been our energy,” sophomore forward Louise Brown said. “So we came out and we didn’t really have the energy that we wanted but we know that we have the energy as a team, we’re a fantastic team. We went into halftime and we knew what we had to do was bring up our energy and we did that from the get-go.”

The result was a 23-6 run to begin the third quarter that erased the Cougs seven-point halftime deficit and game them a 54-44 lead with 3:35 remaining in the period. In a quarter filled with beautiful cuts off ball screens by Hristova that lead to easy layups on slashing passes from senior point guard Dawnyelle Awa and seven of the 20 Trojan turnovers being forced, it was WSU who gave USC a taste of its own style of play.

“We had to finish the game,” sophomore guard Caila Hailey said when referring to a couple of the loose ball steals she dove after in the second half. “Whatever we had to do to finish the game.”

WSU never relinquished its lead after taking its first at 7:07 in the third quarter on a Hristova jumper that made the score 43-42. The Trojans went ice cold from the outside on their midrange and three point attempts, and the Cougs had little trouble closing out the period to secure the 73-61 win. Seven points off turnovers and another seven tallied in second chance points effectively wrote the narrative story of the Cougs out-hustling the Trojans in the second half to claim the victory.

Louise Brown had a career high in rebounds of 13 and freshman center Maria Kostourkova pitched in eight of her own to spur a bounce back effort for WSU in the war for the boards. The team out-rebounded the Trojans 39-38 after being beat up down low against ASU in the previous game, losing the ratio 45-29. WSU also nabbed 42 points in the paint compared to USC’s 32.

UCLA

The Cougs trailed by nine points in the second quarter and later, faced a 72-61 deficit with 6:04 remaining in the game, but found ways each time to pull within one possession of the Bruins. Trailing 75-73 with 25 seconds left, WSU held for the final shot of the contest and had two good looks at the basket from Hristova, but each shot rimmed in and out.

Her first floater in the middle of the lane was knocked out of bounds by UCLA with three seconds left to play, giving the Cougs one last shot at a potential game-tying bucket. Out of a timeout, Hristova curled around a ball screen set by senior forward Mariah Cooks off the inbound on the left baseline and got off a leaning jumper that just did not want to stay in between the rim.

“Loved the look that we got,” Daugherty said of that final possession and Hristova’s performance. “Mariah Cooks set a great screen. I love that Bobi had the guts to take it as a freshman. I appreciate the fact that she bounced back I thought she struggled early in the game, uncharacteristic turnovers. But as a freshman, she didn’t put her head down. She was anxious to get back out there and I thought she had a fantastic second half in particular, and she can take that last-second shot anytime for me.”

Hristova, who entered the contest averaging 17.2 points scored per game, was held to just two in the first half on 1-5 shooting, but responded with 11 in the third quarter that helped galvanize the team’s energy and rally from being eight points down.

A layup from Awa followed up a 3-point shot from Brown to make the score 74-71 at the 2:37 mark of the fourth in favor of UCLA after the Cougs were down by eight with 3:24 left to play, painting an accurate picture of how the game unfolded. The Cougs dug themselves a hole in the first half with 12 turnovers, seven in the first quarter, and allowing the Bruins five trips to the charity stripe before the half but found ways to rally each time the Bruins appeared in a position to put the game away.

“Where we lost this game was the first half,” Daugherty said. “We were careless with the basketball. Twelve turnovers came back to haunt us. We outshot them by 10 percent, we out-rebounded them plus 10 or 12.”

WSU owned the boards, nabbing 48 to UCLA’s 38, and shot 43 percent to the Bruins 39 with 31 bench points, but was ultimately undone by missed rotations on the ball handler inside the three point arc and 18 turnovers for the game. It allowed for 28 free throw attempts for the Bruins and easy looks near the basket.

“She was proud of us,” Brown said of what Daugherty told the team after the game. “They’re number 17 in the country, UCLA is a really respectable team and we kept up with them. It shows that we’ve improved a lot since our first Pac-12 game and preseason as well. To beat a ranked team on Friday and then only go down by two, it’s promising for us.”

The result came up just short for WSU, though following up a win over the No. 25 ranked team with a competitive performance against a foe ranked even higher that came down to the final shot was not lost on anyone affiliated with the program or the Pac-12.

“UCLA is a very talented team, and I thought our kids played their hearts out,” Daugherty said. “I think we proved to ourselves that we are a very talented, very good team. When we push hard, take care of the basketball, then we can beat anybody in the country.

The Cougs will hope to build on the progress and momentum made this weekend by avenging an earlier 79-64 home loss in December to the Washington Huskies Saturday in the second of two meetings between the schools. Tipoff is set for 2 p.m. and will broadcast on the Pac-12 Networks.