The Cal Poly Pomona women’s basketball team faced Cal State San Bernardino for the second time this season. In the last match up, the Broncos blew out the Coyotes 82-57. The Broncos repeated another win Saturday with a score of 77-63.
The Broncos picked themselves back up after losing against two tough teams — UC San Diego and Cal State San Marcos. This win was a power boost for the team as it looks to finish off the rest of the season strong.
The first two quarters of the matchup were a battle, as there were 11 lead changes and the Broncos only had a one-point lead heading into the third quarter. Both teams fought hard, but the Broncos took over in the third quarter as they held the Coyotes to only nine points and had 26 points of their own.
Head coach Danelle Bishop mainly focused on defense in this game as a result of the last two games.
“We worked extremely hard this past week just on defense. We gave up too many points in our last two games, so we really tried to focus on that,” Bishop said. “I think that was evident just with the score and the number of turnovers that we forced and the number of steals we had, as well as the total number of rebounds.”
The Broncos scored 15 points off turnovers, forced 16 steals and outrebounded the Coyotes 50 to 33. Sophomore guard Jayda Villareal had seven of those steals and lead the team in scoring with 17 points.
She gives a lot of credit to her team in getting her open and firing her shots. She also played the most with 35 minutes of playing time and still was able to keep pressure on the offense.
“My team helps me so much to get open, they always look for me and my point guard really likes getting her assists from me,” Villareal said. “I’ve been working really hard on my defense and my conditioning and everything in general, so I’m glad that I was able to get a bunch of steals for my team.”
Senior starting point guard Jackie Ricketson had an outstanding performance and helped lead the Broncos in a big way. Ricketson had an impressive stat line with 12 points, 12 boards, nine assists, two steals and a block to top it off. Ricketson felt really good about her performance and credited her team for helping her achieve a skillful stat line. She manages to remain humble and always look for ways to improve her game.
“I felt pretty good; I could have made more free throws, but my teammates made it really easy because they were pressuring on defense, getting a lot of good tips and steals and running the floor, so they were just making it really easy for me to find them and get open myself,” Ricketson said.
The Broncos responded very strongly and are looking forward to continuing their progress throughout the end of the season. The Broncos will take on San Francisco State for a second time in the season at 5:30 p.m. at home in Kellogg Arena on Thursday, Jan. 30. The Broncos beat the Gators 77-67 in their last meeting. The Broncos are now 12-7 overall and 8-5 in conference.