As good or bad as a regular season might go for a Big West Conference women’s basketball team, there’s always the knowledge that a second season, the postseason tournament, is there.
Cal State Fullerton coach Jeff Harada emphasized that fact after his seventh-seeded Titans beat 10th-seeded Cal Poly, 70-64, on Tuesday afternoon to advance to a Big West Tournament quarterfinal game against UC Irvine on Wednesday night in Henderson, Nevada.
“It’s a new season, and it looks like we’ve learned some lessons,” he said with a smile after the win. “We played a solid game on defense and that turned into offense.”
There wasn’t much close about it. Cal Poly (3-22) played a scrappy game, but the Titans (11-17) bellied up on defense every time they got close and got a series of big plays from their veterans, like Gabi Vidmar, Carolyn Gill, and Ashlee Lewis.
Close is an important word. Fullerton was competitive in virtually every game it played. The final margin in 11 of the Titans’ 17 losses was single digits.
Harada noted that the Titans get another shot at second-seeded UC Irvine (19-10) and recalled that his team had a 15-point lead with eight minutes left before the Anteaters edged them 54-51 when the teams met late last month at UCI. Their first meeting at Fullerton was tight as well before UCI sewed up a 75-67 win in the final two minutes.
Gill, who scored 16 points and had four rebounds, said the team’s motto for the postseason is redemption, as in redeeming all of those close losses
“We were close in a lot of games, and we must get better at finishing games,” she said. “We left a lot of points and wins on the court all season. We just have to show up for the whole game.”
Vidmar added 14 points and Lewis had nine points and nine rebounds. Fullerton needed that kind of effort. Big West Freshman of the Year Lily Wahinekapu picked up two early fouls and was scoreless in the first half. She rebounded for 10 points in the second.
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The Titans also had nine steals. Julia Nielacna (17 points, five rebounds) and Maddie Vick (14 points) paced Cal Poly.
The Mustangs made just two of 14 shots in the first quarter and Fullerton built a 14-5 lead by the first break.
But Cal Poly shot 7 for 12 in the second quarter, led by Nielacna, and managed to take a one-point lead by halftime, 29-28.
The Titans struggled with leading scorer Wahinekapu’s foul trouble in the second quarter, but they got back on track after halftime, led 50-47 after three quarters and eventually extended it to eight points.
Fullerton was 19 for 24 from the free-throw line.