Women’s basketball lives and dies by the zone

By Shyneese Walter |Staff Writer|

The women’s basketball team is continuing to fight despite the fact that their season is quickly coming to a close.

This past weekend the Lady Coyotes walked away with their third straight win as they went on to defeat the Cal State Stanislaus Warriors.

The last time the Coyotes faced off against the Warriors, they managed to come away with a six point victory.

Friday night would prove to be a much different story as the Coyotes absolutely dismantled the Warriors beating them by a final score of 75-42.

Angela Streets, recently named the CCAA player of the week, led the pack once again with an impressive 19 points and eight rebounds. Eliza Dy  followed up with 16 points and eight assists and Kristen Huffman contributed with 16 points of her own.

As a team, the Coyotes shot a whooping 50.8 percent from the field.

This 33-point victory was CSUSB’s largest margin of victory since an outing last year in which they defeated Cal State Dominguez Hills by 32 points.

This game gave the Coyotes an overall 8-13 record and a conference record of 7-10.

With their outstanding performance, it was difficult for head coach Kevin Becker to not be satisfied with his Lady ‘Yotes, especially on the defensive end of the floor.

“They were able to be really effective in our zone defense and limit their ability to drive the lane,” said Becker.

With such an impressive outing against the Warriors, the Coyotes were hoping to carry that momentum over to their next matchup against the Chico State Wildcats.

They found themselves losing a tightly contested matchup however with a final score 64-58.

Despite receiving offensive contributions from Streets, who scored 18, Dy who scored 14 and Jaslyn Cosey who scored 12, the Coyotes saw their three-game winning streak snapped as they were unable to come away with the victory.

Chico State’s  bench played a huge role in their victory as they outscored the Coyotes bench 28-5.

The contest was close with 2:30 remaining in the second half, as the Coyotes found themselves in a tied ball game, at 57 all.

Chico then went into a zone defense which heavily disrupted the Coyotes’ offensive flow.

On top of that, the Warriors took advantage of the quality shots they had and knocked most of them down. Becker felt that their demise was due to the amount of offensive rebounds they gave up.

Despite their impressive performance against Cal State Stanislaus and their hard fought game against Chico State, hardly anyone was in attendance to bare witness.

Only 187 students were in attendance as the Coyotes took it to the Warriors. The game against Chico State saw the numbers rise, though only slightly as only 217 students showed up to support their team.

The lack of attendance is a result of the tough economic times that we live,” said Becker.

“It has been down on both the men’s and women’s sides. You can also see when we are on the road that the numbers are down at other schools.”
Becker and his team would hope to receive more support from the students at CSUSB.

Players feed off the energy of the crowd, and providing a hostile environment for opposing teams would only further inspire the home team to play at a high level.