RIVERSIDE — Poor preparation, poor performance.
California Baptist University women’s basketball coach Jarrod Olson saw his team have a tough week of practice leading into Friday afternoon’s game against UC Santa Barbara that opened up play in the Lancers’ first home tournament of their Division I era. That translated onto the floor where UC Santa Barbara led for the duration in a 74-49 win at the Fowler Events Center.
It snapped a five-game winning streak for the Lancers, who were ranked No. 21 in this week’s collegeinsider.com mid-major poll.
Lauren Olsen led CBU with 13 points, while UC Santa Barbara was led by Zoe Borter’s 19 points and Zoe Shaw’s 15 points.
“UC Santa Barbara beat us in every aspect of the game today and deserved to leave with a win,” Olson said. “For the most part this year we haven’t had the connectivity on offense that I’m used to seeing, and our defense has been saving us. My hope is that by the time we reach Christmas break we’ll put things together on both ends and figure out our identity as a team.”
Olsen started the first quarter scoring for CBU with a layup just over a minute into the contest. UC Santa Barbara responded with an 8-0 run including 3-pointers from Skylar Burke and Jessica Grant to grab a lead they would never relinquish. Chance Bucher cut the deficit to 8-6 after a layup with 5:56 left, but CBU got outscored 11-3 down the stretch and trailed 18-9 after a quarter.
Bucher hit a 3-pointer with 6:11 left until the half that cut the deficit to 23-17. However, Borter responded with five straight points to push UC Santa Barbara’s lead back out to 11 points with just under 5 minutes until intermission. Madison Naro’s 3-pointer with 21 seconds left gave the Gauchos a 36-23 lead at halftime.
UC Santa Barbara, tied for 12th in the country in 3-pointers per game as of Thursday, made eight of their season high 14 shots from beyond the arc in the game’s opening 20 minutes.
CBU gave up three straight 3-pointers to start the second half as the deficit reached 18 points after Shaw hit one of her five makes from beyond the arc with 7:06 left in the third quarter. Khloe Lemon returned to action for the first time since November 14 against San Jose State and scored seven straight points for the Lancers in that quarter.
“It was good to get Khloe back out there and she definitely gave us a boost in that third quarter when we needed it,” Olson said of Lemon, named an all-WAC team preseason selection last month.
The Lancers cut their deficit to 17 points twice in the fourth quarter on a pair of layups by Reyleigh Hess but got no closer and trailed by as many as 27 points before a late layup from Sofia Alonso.
CBU finishes tournament play on Saturday at noon against another Big West Conference opponent Sacramento State.
