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Aggies fall apart in the fourth on their way to 64-51 loss to Long Beach State
With a two-game winning streak and an 11-4 record coming into Thursday night’s game, things were looking good for the UC Davis women’s basketball team as the 49ers of Long Beach State came into town. Unfortunately for the Aggies, the team was never able to get enough momentum to take over the game, and after three solid quarters, found themselves in a hole early in the fourth which they weren’t able to dig themselves out of, eventually falling to their opponent 64-51. The UC Davis women’s basketball team now has an overall season record of 11-5, and is at 2-1 within the Big West conference.
“We faced some adversity in the second half, and I don’t think we did the best job responding to that,” said head coach Jennifer Gross.
Sophomore forward Morgan Bertsch saw the loss not as a deadly blow to the team, but instead a learning experience for her and the rest of the women’s basketball team.
“I think it’s really important to learn from this game,” Bertsch said. “We did have a problem with struggling and getting over that. That was a huge problem for us today.”
The Aggies, who led by as much as five in the first half of the game following strong performances from sophomore guard Kourtney Eaton and freshman forward Nina Bessolo, were never able to gain momentum. Though a majority of the game was close, UC Davis struggled to hit shots all night, shooting just under 30.9 percent from the field and 30.4 percent from downtown. Despite these struggles, the sixth-year coach would not let her team feel too down going into the next few games, which include an away game rematch with Long Beach State on Jan. 21.
“We know who we are, we know what we are capable of,” Gross said. “When things are going great, then we’re feeling great. When things are going down, we are finding a way to feel great again. Tonight, we just couldn’t find enough things to spark us.”
Despite sitting most of the first half, junior forward Pele Gianotti led the team in scoring with 14 points on 4/7 shooting. Bertsch, the team’s leading scorer on the season, struggled to get her shot going, shooting just 2/10 from the field.
“In the first half I missed a lot of easy ones, and that got in my head a little bit, but honestly, I was just missing today,” Bertsch said. “I wasn’t really focusing on it in the second half. Regardless of what happened, they just weren’t falling today.”
The UC Davis women’s basketball team will have very little time to focus on this loss, as CSU, Northridge comes to the Pavilion on Saturday, Jan. 14 at 2 p.m.
Written by: Bradley Geiser — sports@theaggie.org