CMS Women's Basketball Drops Season Finale to UC Santa Cruz

CLAREMONT, Calif. - The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women's basketball team fell in a big early hole and came almost all the way back, but a late UC Santa Cruz run enabled the Banana Slugs to take a 73-55 win over the Athenas in the season finale for CMS on Friday at Roberts Pavilion.

UC Santa Cruz improves to 9-14 with the win before heading off to its conference tournament. CMS, which lost four players for the year with injuries along the way, concludes its season at 4-21. 

CMS didn't adjust well to the early (1 p.m.) start and fell in a 19-0 hole before Mary Markaryan broke the ice with 4:02 left in the third. The Athenas kept battling, pulling within 23-8 after the end of the first quarter, and then 37-25 at the half. 

A 22-13 third quarter got CMS all the way to within 50-47 heading into the fourth, and it was still 53-50 with 7:24 to play, but the Banana Slugs went on a 15-0 run to build the lead back up to 68-50.

Markaryan led CMS with 13 points on the day, while Katie Resendiz had 11 off the bench, and Sadie Heckman and Syona Mandaym each had nine. 

CMS will return most of its 2023-24 roster next year, with Markaryan and Heckman the only two seniors on this year's squad. Renee Chong, who was the leading returning scorer for CMS before being lost for the year with an injury for preseason, will be back next year, while Ava Grey, Grace Florendo and Gwen Gilmore will also look to return healthy next year as well.