Cal Poly women’s basketball coach Faith Mimnaugh was unresponsive for a moment, as if reflecting on the past 11 seasons, all filled with high expectations often marred by injuries to key players and disappointment.
The question posed to Mimnaugh was a simple one: How would you feel about procuring your first winning season at Cal Poly?
“It’s about time,” she finally said. “We’ve been battling here.”
The Mustangs (15-7, 7-3 Big West Conference) have their first opportunity to win that battle when they take on UC Santa Barbara at 4 p.m. tomorrow in the WBCA Pink Zone game to benefit cancer awareness at Mott Gym.
With a win over the rival Gauchos, the team can guarantee Mimnaugh her first winning season, and the school’s first since the 1991-92 campaign.
But UC Santa Barbara (15-7, 10-0) provides a formidable task. Past the halfway mark in the conference schedule, the Gauchos are unblemished against the Big West, including a 55-45 defeat of Cal Poly at the Thunderdome last month.
The Mustangs put a serious scare into the Gauchos at home, leading by 12 points at halftime. But it all unraveled in the second half. UC Santa Barbara would outscore Cal Poly by 22 points after the break to secure the win.
“The team is aware that we played one really good half at Santa Barbara, but we’re definitely going to have to play 40 minutes in order to beat them,” Mimnaugh said.
The Mustangs haven’t lost since that night. They’ve run off six consecutive victories since the defeat, building momentum towards what could arguably be the biggest regular season match up between the Central Coast rivals.
“It’s going to be very physical, so we’re going to try to bring it,” senior forward Megan Harrison said after last Saturday’s game against Cal State Fullerton.
Harrison became the first Cal Poly player to collect a double-double this season when she had 18 points and 10 rebounds against the Titans last week. As a senior, Harrison has seen some of the down times in previous years. She said she’s glad to be playing on a team that is talented enough to contend for conference supremacy.
“Since I’ve been here suddenly everyone’s believing that we can win a championship,” she said. “When I started my freshman year we were at the bottom of the pack and now we’re up at the top.”
The Mustangs can normally rely on their size advantage against the smaller teams in the conference, but the Gauchos counter with size of their own.
Led by the 6-foot-4 duo of seniors Jenna Green and Kat Suderman, UC Santa Barbara’s frontline is the only other in the conference that rivals Cal Poly.
Suderman, a San Luis Obispo native, will be playing her last game at Mott Gym on Saturday. She did not play in the teams’ previous meeting this year.
But Green did, scoring a game-high 16 points on 5-of-8 shooting.
Despite the confidence Cal Poly has coming into the game, sophomore forward Kristina Santiago said it wouldn’t make a difference in the team’s preparation for UC Santa Barbara.
“When you’re losing you’re always working trying to get back into it and when you’re winning you feel like you’re in a groove,” she said. “Either way this team just tries to get after it.”