Ryan ChartrandDespite the fact that the Cal Poly women’s basketball team has lost eight of 10 games, and will next play UC Riverside, which has won six straight, the Mustangs could still have plenty of reasons to be optimistic about their chances in the Big West Conference race.
“There are four or five teams that, if they get on a roll at any particular time, could all win it,” said Cal Poly head coach Faith Mimnaugh.
Her Mustangs (9-17, 6-7), who’ve lost five of seven Big West games after starting 4-0 in conference play for the first time in 28 years, will put their resiliency to test at 7 tonight in visiting the Highlanders, who’ve won 11 of 13 overall after starting an uncharacteristic 2-9.
In the Mustangs’ two most recent mishaps, they blew considerable leads late.
On Thursday, they gave up an 11-0 run during the final four minutes and 18 seconds in a 53-47 defeat at the hands of UC Davis, before surrendering a 17-4 run amidst the final 6:17 of regulation in a 75-69 overtime loss to Pacific on Saturday.
“I think our hearts were definitely broken,” Mimnaugh said of the pair of falters, in which Cal Poly committed a combined 51 turnovers. “I think the team is really searching for an opportunity to come away with a win.”
The Highlanders have had no problem doing that, as their six-game spree was triggered with a 67-55 victory over Cal Poly on Feb. 2, when the Mustangs went 7:44 without scoring, descending a 30-24 deficit into a 42-24 margin they couldn’t recover from.
Guard Seyram Gbewonyo was 7 of 13 from the floor to lead the Highlanders with 23 points, while forward Tainoisouti Lott went 6 of 10 to chip in 14 points.
In UC Riverside’s 64-58 win over Cal State Fullerton on Saturday, Gbewonyo led four double-digit scorers with 18 points, and Lott added 14 of her own.
Gbewonyo is third in the conference in scoring, at 13.6 points per contest, but more instrumental to the Highlanders’ surge could be their defense, which ranks No. 1 in the Big West by holding opponents to just 38.8-percent shooting from the floor.
Still, Mimnaugh says fifth-place Cal Poly, which leads the conference in both rebounding (40.2 per game) and assist-to-turnover ratio (.8 per game), should be encouraged by its close outing against first-place UC Santa Barbara (18-7, 12-1) in a 74-72 overtime loss Feb. 16 and then the more recent, narrow slipup against second-place UC Davis (17-9, 11-3), which beat UCSB 59-56 in overtime Saturday.
“This has been a freaky kind of year,” Mimnaugh said. “It’s really been a lack of consistent performance on our team’s behalf.”