CMS Women's Basketball Has Strong Effort Against No. 2 Whitman Before Falling 64-50

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. – The second-ranked Whitman women's basketball team used a 12-0 run spanning the first and second quarters to take a 23-11 lead, and held off several CMS comeback attempts the rest of the way to take a hard-fought 64-50 win on Sunday afternoon at UC Santa Cruz's Kaiser Permanente Arena.

With the win, Whitman improves to 10-0 on the season, while CMS slips to 3-8, capping off the 2021 calendar year with a difficult road trip against two teams with a combined 17-1 record after falling to host UC Santa Cruz (7-1) yesterday.

The Athenas stayed close in the early going, and a Jacey Carter driving layup with 3:15 left in the first quarter tied the score at 11-11. The Blues finished the first quarter on a 5-0 run to make it a 16-11 game going into the second, then scored the next seven points to stretch the lead up to 23-11, resulting in a 12-0 run that would account for almost all of the final 14-point margin.

Austyn Masuno kept UC Santa Cruz from pulling away for the rest of the half by scoring all eight CMS points in the second quarter on a basket and 6-6 shooting from the free throw line, but Whitman was still able to hold a 34-19 lead at the break. CMS continued to battle, and used an 8-0 run in the third quarter to cut a 40-22 deficit down to 40-30. Elizabeth Howell-Egan started the run with a three-pointer, Grace Florendo followed with another three-pointer and Kayla Ishibashi capped it off with a jumper off a Howell-Egan pass. However, the Blues bounced back with an 8-0 run of their own to stretch the lead back to 18.

The Athenas again got the lead down to 11, as Masuno converted a layup off a Jocelyn Song assist, and Eliza Friend had a basket and foul shot to make it 48-35 after three quarters. Masuno tallied the first basket of the fourth to cap a 7-0 run to close the deficit to 48-37. After the Blues opened a lead back up, Ava Grey had a three-pointer with 3:12 left to make it 58-47, and Masuno hit two foul shots to cut it to 59-49 with 2:12 remaining, but that was as close as the Athenas could come.   

Masuno led CMS with 14 points, while Ishibashi had eight, Friend added seven and Sadie Heckman chipped in with six, as CMS shot 6-12 from three-point territory and 14-16 from the foul line.

CMS will have 17 days off before returning to action on Wednesday, Jan. 5, when it gets back to SCIAC play with a home game against Caltech at 7 p.m.