Ellen Ozier / Reuters

Rutgers C. Vivian Stringer and her players celebrate their win over Arizona State on Monday.

“After everything this team has been through this year, I was just going to tell them to have fun,” Arizona State coach Charli Turner Thorne said as her voice cracked. “I never thought we would make the tournament. With all the things we went through this year, I never thought we could do this. This is the most incredible team I’ve ever been a part of.”

Rutgers used tough defense to take command, holding Arizona State to one field goal during the first 8½ minutes of the second half.

The Scarlet Knights gradually increased their lead with a basket here and a free throw there, all the while using occasionally relentless full-court pressure to turn the tables on the press-minded Sun Devils.

Prince’s foul shot gave the Scarlet Knights their first double-figure lead of the game, 39-29, with 13:11 to play, and it never got much tighter after that.

Kirsten Thompson pulled Arizona State to 41-32 on a turnaround jumper moments later, but Rutgers reeled off three straight baskets: a 3-pointer by Prince, a turnaround jumper from Vaughn and a jump shot by Carson that made it 48-32 with 8:51 left and all but sealed it.

Briann January had 12 points in returning to the starting lineup after suffering a concussion for the Sun Devils (31-5), who advanced deeper into the tournament than any other team in school history. Before this season, Arizona State had never made it past the round of 16 in three tries.

The Sun Devils reverted to the poor shooting that plagued them in the first two rounds of the tournament. Arizona State, which shot just 36 percent in wins over UC Riverside and Louisville, was optimistic after making more than half of its shots against Bowling Green.

But those struggles returned when they could least be afforded, with Rutgers holding the Sun Devils to 32.7 percent shooting. They finished 5-of-17 from beyond the arc, and came close to a dubious scoring record in the regional finals — barely surpassing Texas Tech’s miserable 44-point performance against Tennessee in 2000.

“We took wide-open shots, and we missed,” Turner Thorne said. “The 3s were open. We just took too many.”

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