ANAHEIM — The Mustangs are going to the ‘ship.
After a season full of promise fell short of a Big West Championship last year, the Mustangs are doing their best to make sure that doesn’t happen again. In a tale of two halves, the Mustangs rode a 38-point second half to down Pacific 70-55 Friday — clinching Cal Poly’s second-ever Big West Tournament Championship berth.
It’s a feat which head coach Faith Mimnaugh and the Mustangs nearly achieved two years ago, but a team filled with names like Lisa McBride, Kristina Santiago and Megan Harrison fell short.
“It’s definitely a coach’s dream to get to the championship game,” Mimnaugh said. “This team deserves it. We’ve been through a lot, we’ve worked our butts off and I can’t be more proud of them — and want more for them — then to play in the championship game and have a chance to go the NCAA Tournament.”
But through the first 20 minutes, the Mustangs were close to having their storied season fall short in the semifinals.
Through one half, the Mustangs couldn’t separate themselves from Pacific. Run for run, Cal Poly found themselves either behind the Tigers, or tied. Guard Rachel Clancy did her best to pull away from Pacific, but her 18 first-half points weren’t enough. Pacific was able to take a five-point advantage with just under eight minutes left in the first half.
With the Mustangs on the ropes, they fought back to take a 32-32 lead at the break. And despite some bad luck in the first half, Clancy said she found no need to try and fire up her team heading into what could have been their final 20 minutes together.
“I didn’t think our girls need rallying, I might have been a bit vocal at halftime, but coach Faith did her job,” Clancy said. “She inspired us in the second half, told us to come out with a real balanced offense in and we really buckled down on D. I think we just trusted in the strategy and knew that we were matched in the first half, but were going to blow it up in the second half.”
The Mustangs sure did. They came out of the break and fired off an 11-0 run, capped by a jumper by guard Jonae Ervin. After Pacific was able to crawl back to within seven points, center Abby Bloetscher put the Mustangs up by 13 points with just under 10 minutes to go in the game.
From there, they wouldn’t let the Tigers get closer than 10 points en route to the victory.
“Today, we just focused on doing whatever we needed to do to survive,” Mimnaugh said. “We felt like we still had some intensity that we could bring to the floor. It was the really the big reason to our second half run … I was just really, really pleased with the effort we gave tonight.”
Clancy finished with a game-high 26 points to go with team-high 14 rebounds. The only other scorer for the Mustangs to post double figures was Bloetscher. She scored 13 points and racked up 12 rebounds.
With the win, the Mustangs will play in the Big West Tournament Championship game tomorrow at 1 p.m. The last trip Cal Poly took to the championship game was the end of the 2008-09 season, where the Mustangs lost to UC Santa Barbara 64-57.
However, this time, the Mustangs are looking to avoid the same fate.
“It’s the biggest game of our careers,” Clancy said. “We definitely want to come out with a great performance, and I think if we play Cal Poly ball, we will be very difficult to stop.”