One more to go.
On Thursday night at Pullman, Wash., No. 6 Cal women’s basketball team soundly defeated Washington State, 73-60. Despite a tight first half, the Bears (26-2, 16-1 in the Pac-12) widened the lead after halftime for the easy victory.
With one win under their belt, Cal will earn at least a share of the Pac-12 regular season title with Stanford if it also wins the Saturday game against Washington. Shared or outright, they will hoist the conference trophy for the very first time in their 41-year history.
After a 71-36 victory against the Huskies, the Cardinal will face Washington State on Saturday.
For a couple of brief moments in the first half, the conference bottom-dwellers Cougars (10-18, 6-11) looked like they could put the Bears’ title hopes in jeopardy. Washington State showed more fight in their performance than expected.
At the 10:43 mark of the first half, the Cougars took the lead, 20-19, forcing Cal coach Lindsay Gottlieb to call a timeout. While the Bears made seven of its first 14 field goal attempts, Washington State shot lights out, draining eight of its first 12.
Cougars guard Lia Galdeira led the team with 10 points during that stretch. But following the timeout, Galdeira was nowhere to be seen for the rest of the first half.
As Galdeira’s shooting performance was smothered to nothingness by the Cal defense, the Bears took the upper hand in the contest. Starting guards Brittany Boyd and Layshia Clarendon scored Cal’s next 14 points.
Washington State still held even with the Bears sans Galdeira throughout the first half. But the Cougars conceded three 3-pointers in the last 100 seconds of the frame to head into halftime up 42-35.
Washington State couldn’t recover in the second half. After scoring two unanswered buckets in the beginning minutes of the second half, the Cougars’ offense failed to score a single point for a five-minute stretch.
By the time Washington State woke out of its forced hibernation, the team was down by 13 with 13 minutes left.
Meanwhile, the Bears bombarded the Cougars with 3-pointers. Guards Clarendon, Afure Jemerigbe and Mikayla Lyles relentlessly drilled long-distance shots to widen the gap.
Jemerigbe finished with 14 points, going 4-for-9 from behind the 3-point line. Lyles, a backup who specializes in 3-pointers, was perfect in all three of her 3-point attempts.
Central to Cal’s success was Clarendon. The senior guard shot 26 points and made four of her seven 3-point attempts. While other players like Talia Caldwell (five points), Gennifer Brandon (five points) and Boyd (four points) remained silent for the entire game, Clarendon was consistent as ever, serving as the Bears’ go-to scorer.
Thursday night fit into Gottlieb’s message of finding ways to win. Even when the frontcourt, the self-proclaimed “best post in the West Coast,” couldn’t find the net, the backcourt found its 3-point touch, a facet of Cal’s game constantly in need of improvement.
Contact Seung at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @sngyn92.