PORTLAND, Ore. — Young teams like young people show their growth more dramatically than the rest of us. That was the case Thursday night for the Portland State women's basketball team, which followed up an 0-2 start to Big Sky play last weekend with a 74-53 win at Viking Pavilion over last year's Big Sky regular-season champion in Idaho.
 
Thursday night's win showed the young Vikings learned their lesson from their loss to Southern Utah Monday. The Vikings (7-6, 1-2 Big Sky) got within three points at 58-55 with five minutes left against the Thunderbirds before giving up 13 straight points and only scored three points the rest of the way. Thursday night, the Vikings responded to the Vandals (7-5, 2-1 Big Sky) tying it up at 49 at the start of the fourth quarter with a 25-4 run to close out the game. The Vikings scored 12 straight points to go up 61-49 with just under five minutes to go, and then ended the game with 13 straight points after Idaho scored on back-to-back possessions. 
 
The Vikings had a similar run earlier in the game, when Idaho took its only lead at 35-33 with 6:32 to go. The Vikings answered with an 11-2 run to go up 44-35, with Kylie Jimenez and Desirae Hansen converting back-to-back three-point plays, while Belle Frazier capped the run with a three-pointer.
 
"Going through the road weekend [to open Big Sky play] and not really playing well but still going through the experience helped us tonight," PSU head coach Lynn Kennedy said afterwards. "Idaho came back and we responded. It just showed our maturity. We're getting better. We're understanding time and score. We're understanding execution. I thought we did a great job in the fourth of getting stops. [Idaho's Gina] Marxen was on fire. She started getting on fire so we had to extend out to her, get a hand up."
 
Hansen and senior forward Jordan Stotler bookended the Vikings' win with strong first and fourth quarters, respectively. Hansen led the Vikings in the first quarter, as she scored 10 of the Vikings' 12 points in the period while going 5-of-5 from the field. Stotler, meanwhile, scored eight of her 10 points in the fourth quarter, when she was 4-of-4 from the field.
 
Hansen finished with 21 points on 9-of-13 shooting, giving her back-to-back 20-point games after she scored 23 against Southern Utah Monday. Hansen chipped in seven rebounds and five assists against the Vandals, while adding one steal and one block.
 
Stotler posted her second double-double of the season with 10 points and 11 rebounds while adding four assists and five blocks. Stotler now has 22 blocks over the Vikings' last four games, giving her an average of 5.5 blocks per game during that stretch. Stotler's first block Thursday moved her into the career top 10 at Portland State, where she now ranks ninth all time with 86 career blocks.
 
"Jordan is such a good defender. Tonight, she was really locked in defensively and was rebounding the ball well," Kennedy said of Stotler. "She stepped up to the moment. She knew this was a big game and she stepped up and got those stops for us."
 
All five Viking starters finished with 10 or more points, as Jimenez (12), Tatiana Streun (10) and Frazier (10) joined Hansen and Stotler in double figures. Freshman Cassidy Gardner added nine points on 3-of-6 shooting from beyond the arc, and grabbed a career-high six rebounds.
 
Jimenez tied a career high with nine assists, while the Vikings recorded 22 assists on 29 field goals Thursday. The heavy assist total marked a return to form for the Vikings offense, which had been held to single-digits assists in their two road losses last weekend.
 
The Vikings also returned to form on the boards, where they out-rebounded the Vandals, 49-33. The Vikings limited the Vandals to only seven offensive rebounds, which resulted in only six second-chance points. Additionally, the Vikings' 49 rebounds marked their second highest total of the season to date, while their plus-16 rebounding margin tied a season high.
 
"Rebounding tonight was the key," Kennedy said. "I thought we did a really good job of limiting them to only one shot."
 
Hansen led the Vikings to a 12-6 advantage after the first quarter, while her free throw with 6:54 left in the second quarter gave the Vikings an 18-9 lead. The Vandals, meanwhile, started the game 4-of-24 overall and 1-of-13 from beyond the arc as the Viking defense stifled them early.
 
The Vandals found their stroke from there, however, and Idaho sophomore Gina Marxen in particular. Marxen, who leads the Big Sky with 3.1 three-pointers made per game, hit three three-pointers in the second quarter while the Vandals as a team hit five of their last six three-pointers in the first half.
 
Marxen added three more three-pointers in the third quarter, the last of which came off a steal that made it 46-44 with 52 seconds left before the fourth quarter.
 
Gardner answered for the Vikings with a three-pointer that made it 49-44, but the Vandals tied it up again at 49-49 with a three-pointer from Janie King at the start of the fourth quarter.
 
The Vandals fell into a cold spell soon after that, however, as the Viking defense stepped up again to force eight straight three-point misses from the Vandals to close out the game. The Vandals finished 10-of-37 from deep for the game, but that came over three distinct periods where they were 1-of-13 at the start, 9-of-16 from midway through the second quarter to the start of the fourth quarter, and 0-of-8 to finish the game.
 
The Vikings, meanwhile, went 10-of-20 from beyond the arc, the fifth time this season they've hit 10 or more shots from deep. Jimenez and Gardner hit three three-pointers each, while Streun and Frazier made two each. Jimenez and Frazier went a combined 5-of-9 from beyond the arc, just three days after they were a combined 0-of-9 against Southern Utah.
 
The Vikings can now level their Big Sky record at 2-2 with a win over Eastern Washington Saturday. The Vikings host the Eagles in a rematch of last season's Big Sky championship game at 2 p.m. (PT) Saturday at Viking Pavilion.
 
Game Notes: The Vikings improved to 14-26 all time against Idaho…The Vikings had lost 10 straight games to the Vandals before beating them in the Big Sky semifinals last season, and have now won two straight against Idaho…Jimenez moved into sole possession of seventh place in career three pointers with her three makes against the Vandals.