By snoadmin
In its first two games of the season, the Long Beach State women’s basketball team looked like a team with eight freshmen on the roster.
Lack of rebounding against USC was one of many factors that led to an 85-50 pounding by the No. 22 ranked Trojans over the 49ers at the Galen Center on the USC campus Friday night.
Too many turnovers and a strong shooting performance by Santa Clara was enough to hand LBSU its second loss in as many games, with the Broncos beating the 49ers 76-67 Sunday afternoon at The Walter Pyramid.
“USC is the best team I have faced in my four years here as coach,” said LBSU head coach Mary Hegarty. “Santa Clara is a great shooting team, especially [Chandice Cronk].”
Against the Trojans, LBSU (0-2) was able to hang with USC for much of the first half, and even led 27-25 with about three minutes remaining until halftime.
Then the floodgates opened.
USC finished the half on a 12-3 run, and it even got worse after halftime, with the Trojans outscoring The Beach 31-8 to start the second half.
LBSU couldn’t hang with a more athletic USC team on the boards. The Trojans out-rebounded the 49ers 41-29, and had 15 offensive rebounds to just one offensive rebound for LBSU.
Tyresha Calhoun led The Beach with 14 points and Karina Figueroa had 12 points in the 35-point loss.
“The way we played in the first half is the way we should always play,” Figueroa said. “In the second half we acted too comfortable and didn’t play as hard as we did in the first half.”
Like the USC game, LBSU was neck-and-neck with Santa Clara for much of the first half, until the Broncos put some separation between the two teams late in the half.
With 3:35 left in the half, Santa Clara held a slim 25-24 lead, but scored 12 of the last 14 points in the half to go into halftime up 37-26.
Thanks to two 3-pointers by freshman Lauren Sims early in the second half, LBSU cut the deficit to only two at 42-40.
But Santa Clara answered back, making two baskets to boost the lead back to six points and with 11:08 left, Cronk hit her fourth trey of the game to put Santa Clara up 52-44.
Santa Clara would not let the 49ers get any closer than four points for the rest of the game and eventually won by nine. LBSU had 24 turnovers in the game to just eight for Santa Clara.
Santa Clara’s Cronk led all scorers with 24 points and LBSU was led by Calhoun, who scored 16 points but also had seven turnovers. Forward Kaiti O’Brien had 13 points and 12 rebounds, both of which were career-highs.
