By snoadmin
ANAHEIM – One by one, teams left the floor of the Anaheim Convention Center in tears last week as they realized their playoff run was over. The Long Beach State women’s basketball team managed to keep its hopes alive for two rounds, until its run finally ended as well.
The No. 6 seed LBSU prevailed over No. 7 UC Irvine (76-64) and No. 3 Cal Poly (70-67) to make it into the semifinal round of the Big West Conference Tournament, playing against No. 1 UC Riverside. Although it was a close game throughout, the defending conference champion Highlanders pulled through with a 59-53 win.
“To be honest, until that buzzer went off at the end, I really didn’t have any doubt that we weren’t going to win that game,” Head coach Mary Hegarty said. “I believed we could do it, our team believed we could do it. Until the very end any thoughts other than that never really crept into my mind.”
According to Hegarty, the team was extremely confident coming in, and thought nothing of the fact that UCR was not only the defending conference champions, but the regular season champions as well. Karina Figueroa said the team did not feel at all threatened by the Highlanders, and the game felt no different than any other. Until the end, that is, when suddenly there was no tomorrow.
“If there’s a game tomorrow, I’m playing,” Figueroa said. “We really left it all out there on the court.”
LBSU (9-23) had a fighting chance against the Highlanders right up until the end. Figueroa scored a game-high 20 points, the most she had throughout the tournament. Ally Wade had 14 and Kaiti O’Brien finished with 11.
Figueroa, who was voted to the conference’s second team, was extremely beneficial to the 49ers in the conference tournament. Although she scored only 10 points against UC Irvine, far below her 21.3 conference game average, she chipped in 17 against Cal Poly, including the game-winning 3-pointer with just 16 seconds to go.
“She’s just carried us all year, and I think she’s one of the best players in the conference,” Hegarty said. “I know there are some great players in the conference, and I think everybody on the first team is great and deserves it, but I think Karina deserves it as well. She’s just played huge for us all year.”
Figueroa may have carried the team through most of the season, but in the past month the team has relied less and less on Figueroa, as several others have started producing. Hegarty, Figueroa, O’Brien and Courtney Jacob have all attributed the team’s recent success to finally coming together as a whole.
“I’ve been hoping things would start to come together and gel all year,” O’Brien said. “We’ve played pretty well the past few weeks, and I think that has to do with the team coming together.”
UCR, who defeated LBSU both times the teams met during the regular season (58-43, 52-45) even noticed a change in the team. Head coach John Margaritis was surprised at the level of play from the 49ers and the fact that the score was kept low and close.
“They played us close during the regular season also. I think Mary does a great job with that,” Margaritis said. “Those young ladies worked exceptionally hard. I think they have a lot to be proud of.”
Although the team may be disappointed in its loss, Hegarty is in no way disappointed with the way they played. She said she feels that the team showed the conference just how strong of a team LBSU really is, despite its losing record.
“I thought we competed extremely well,” Hegarty said. “I’m extremely proud of our team and the way we competed and certainly the way we’ve played [in] the last month.”
