After three quarters of offensive struggles for the UC Riverside and Long Beach State women’s basketball teams, it seemed the first to step out of the cold would win their Big West Tournament first-round game on Wednesday afternoon.
It was the Highlanders who finally took a match to their offense at the start of the fourth quarter and that thawed them out enough to win, 54-40, at Lee’s Family Forum in Henderson, Nevada.
With its fifth consecutive victory, seventh-seeded UCR (17-14) advanced to face third-seeded UC Davis (19-11) in a quarterfinal on Thursday at 2:30 p.m.
“We’ve been battle-tested all year,” UCR coach Brad Langston said. “Just the grit that we showed tonight, resilience, even though we didn’t make shots, we still were confident and remained steady to get the victory.”
The Highlanders were shooting 25% from the floor at the end of the third quarter and LBSU was at 21.7%, but UCR made four of its first five field goal attempts to begin the fourth, including three straight 3-pointers that helped turn a three-point lead into an 11-point advantage with 4:06 remaining.
Sixth-seeded Long Beach (16-14) ended up shooting 25.4% for the night, including 3 for 20 from 3-point range. Rachel Loobie led LBSU with eight points and 12 rebounds.
“At some point, the ball’s going to fall, and it just didn’t fall our way,” LBSU coach Amy Wright said.
Makayla Rose, who finished with a team-high 13 points for the Highlanders, sank the first 3-pointer in the decisive stretch and the final one to give UCR its biggest lead of the game at 45-34.
“I just just trust my teammates that, no matter how many shots that I might miss, that they’re still going to find me,” said Rose, who added six assists and three steals. “They’re just as confident as me, which makes me believe in myself, so I just set my feet and let it go.”
Long Beach had beaten UCR in both regular-season meetings this season and came into the game with the top scoring offense in the Big West (69.2 ppg), but LBSU missed its first 12 shots before Loobie sank a 3-pointer to cut the lead to 6-3 with 2:17 left in the first quarter.
Long Beach ended up shooting 1 for 14 in the opening quarter, but UCR wasn’t much better at 3 for 12
“After the first quarter, we really put that behind us and we were really ready to put this game away,” Rose said.
Long Beach got some help from its bench to start the second quarter and a post move by Judit Oliva Fernandez capped a 6-0 run and gave LBSU its first lead at 12-10.
UCR eventually took a 17-14 lead by halftime with help from Gemma Cutler, who scored all eight of her points in the first half, more than double her season average.
Long Beach hit another dry spell in the third quarter, missing nine straight field goal attempts during a stretch to fall behind by nine points.
Long Beach senior guard Savannah Tucker, a first-team All-Big West pick who came in averaging a conference-leading 16.9 ppg, miss her first 10 field goal attempts and didn’t score until making two free throws with 12 seconds left in the third quarter to cut the deficit to 31-27, a score that remained until the start of the fourth.
Tucker made her first basket to tie the score at 33-all with 7:33 left, but Esther Matarranz answered with a three-point play, which preceded the 3-pointers by Rose and another by Shelley Duchemin that suddenly blew open a 45-34 lead.
LBSU couldn’t get closer the rest of the way thanks to a 9-for-10 effort at the free-throw line by the Highlanders.
“We’ve had a rollercoaster ride the whole year,” Wright said. “Some days, we look like the best team in the conference and should be ranked in the mid-major polls, and then other days we look like we should be a D2 team.”
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