The UCSB women’s basketball team looked pretty in pink Tuesday night through its efforts to raise breast cancer awareness, but the Gauchos were left blue after a 70-51 loss at home to Oregon State.
While the Gauchos racked up a school-record record 12 blocks, they also gave 14 turnovers to the Beavers and were out-rebounded 38-26. Moreover, UCSB was unable to prevent three of the Beavers from scoring double figures. Sophomore guard Talisa Rhea led with 23 points, while UCSB was led by 12 points from Jenna Green.
As soon as the Beavers (16-10) began a 12-3 run in the final six minutes of the first half, the Gauchos (17-9) had little opportunity to catch up with their aggressive and dynamic opponent.
Head coach Lindsay Gottlieb said that despite the loss, the game against the Pac-10 team was great practice for the NCAA tournament, which the Gauchos hope to make by winning the upcoming Big West tourney.
“I think at this time of the year we want to be setting ourselves up for something bigger,” Gottlieb said. “I feel like for the most part we were committed to what our goals were and we just fell a little bit short.”
UCSB’s previous opponents had been held to a low 34.2% field goal percentage, but Oregon State managed to average close to nine-percent higher at 42.9% overall.
Gottlieb also said her team had not lost its determination to play at higher levels of intensity, excitement and execution after its first conference loss to Pacific University last Thursday.
“I don’t think we strayed from [our goals],” Gottlieb said. “We weren’t technically as sound as we need to be, but we weren’t backing down.”
Junior Chris Spencer said that even though her team was undoubtedly aggressive on defense, the Beavers were able to predict and out-maneuver the Gauchos’ strategies.
“I think a difference between a Pac-10 team and a Big West team is that if they go to the hole and get blocked, they look to stay with it and score,” Spencer said. “In the Pac-10 and bigger conferences, you have players that are very complete…that can make our defensive assignments a lot harder.”
“They really just attacked us the whole game, they didn’t stop,” senior Kat Suderman said.
The team was proud to have the game sponsored as a “Pink Zone” event. In addition to each of the Gaucho players and coaches wearing pink in order to raise breast cancer awareness, t-shirts made by the players were auctioned off to fans with a portion of the proceeds going towards breast cancer research.
The Gauchos will host Cal State Northridge for their last home game this Saturday at 2 p.m. UCSB has only three more games before the Big West tournament.
