The Long Beach State women’s basketball team were able to overcome a seven and a half minute scoreless stretch in the second half to come away with a 61-58 overtime victory Thursday over the University of Nevada.
Senior forward Tipesa Moorer’s second double-double on the season paced the ‘Niners’ (3-6) attack. Moorer scored a game-high 18 points on 6 of 20 shooting and pulled down 11 rebounds.
Moorer was not the only 49er to play a key role in the victory, though.
Freshman guard Bianka Balthazar had her best game of the season, scoring 16 points on 6 of 14 from the field, including 3 of 5 from 3-point range. She also grabbed five rebounds. Freshman guard Alex Sanchez also scored in double figures for The Beach with 11 points on 3 of 9 shooting, including 5 of 7 from the free throw line.
The ‘Niners held a 30-19 lead over the Wolfpack (2-6) at the break. Nevada, however, was not going to lay down and take a loss lightly. The Beach led, 45-33, with 13:32 left in the second half when the Wolfpack put together a 16-0 run to take a 49-45 lead.
LBSU head coach Jody Wynn said she told her team they needed to attack the rim to get back in the game.
“[I told them] that we weren’t going to get it back by just shooting 3s,” she said. “I think that’s the easiest thing for a young team to do. I wanted them to get to the line and get paint touches.”
Moorer said that this team was ready for this type of situation.
“Coach puts us through a lot of drills where we have to push through [situations like this],” she said. “We practiced being down 20 because we don’t finish the second half as well as we should.
“The fact that we trust each other and we were calm and composed, and we just kept fighting back and knew that we were going to get it eventually.”
Nevada senior forward Kayla Williams was able to get plenty of paint touches in the second half, scoring all of her points after the break and leading the Wolfpack back into the game. Williams scored 16 points on 7 of 13 shooting [7 of 12 in the second half] and pulled down eight rebounds.
Coach Wynn said slow defensive rotations helped Williams’ second period domination.
“We mixed things up [defensively], but Kayla [Williams] had a really strong second half,” she said. “That hurt us because our rotations weren’t good.”
The Beach was able to force 28 turnovers which led to 26 points, but none more important than the one created by freshman guard Chantel Dooley late in the second half.
With the ‘Niners trailing, 55-54, with 47 seconds remaining in the game, Dooley stole the Wolfpack’s inbound pass and had the presence of mind to throw it off a Nevada player, giving LBSU the ball back.
Coach Wynn said they saw an advantage by putting Dooley on their point guard.
“Chantel [Dooley] is our best on-ball defender, and she stepped up and made some big plays for us,” she said.
Sanchez scored five of the six LBSU points in the extra period to help end The Beach’s three-game losing streak.
The ‘Niners will be back in action Sunday when they travel to the McKale Center in Tucson to face Arizona at noon.
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