ARCATA – Four Jacks scored in double figures, led by senior Brittney Taylor's 21 points and 14 rebounds, as the Humboldt State women's basketball team won a crucial California Collegiate Athletic Association game 70-63 over the Broncos of Cal Poly Pomona on Thursday night and moved into a tie for second place in the conference.

With the win the Lumberjacks record improves to 15-6 overall, 13-4 in CCAA action.  CPP is now 16-5 and 13-4 in conference play as well.

Box Score

Andrea Bobic scored 13 points, Bree Taylor had 10 and eight rebounds and freshman Lisa Petty added 12, her career high.

The Broncos were paced by Stephisha Walton and Reyana Colson, each of whom had 17 points.  Walton also had 14 rebounds and Megan Ford had 14 points and seven boards.

“This is a really good Pomona team,” head coach Joddie Gleason said. “They come out and really defend well.  They try to get you out of your sets by being very aggressive on defense.  This week we worked on moving the ball around on offense before we went inside to Brittney (Taylor) and making them work a lot on defense.  We did a very good job of that tonight.”

The Broncos jumped out to a 12-3 lead in the first seven minutes, taking advantage of six HSU turnovers. 

Over the next six minutes HSU put together a 14-5 run, led by four points each from Taylor and Paige Peterson, to tie the game at 17-17 with 6:38 to go before half time.

The Jacks pushed their advantage three point a couple of times before the half and took a 27-26 lead to the locker room.  In the first 20 minutes HSU outshot the Broncos 41.7 to 36.4 percent and held the conference's third leading scorer, Colson to just five points.

To open the second half, the Jacks were hitting from behind the arc, led by a 3-pointer from Petty and two from Bobic, to take a five-point lead, 38-33.

Taylor then took over scoring six straight points for the Lumberjacks and extending the lead to nine points, 44-35.  But Colson and Ford came right back for CPP tallying nine unanswered points to tie it up at 44-44 with 12:01 to play.

Over the next three plus minutes the teams traded buckets, but with 8:20 to play, the Broncos committed their seventh team foul.  For the remainder of the game the Jacks went to the line 16 times and made 13. 

With 7:28 left HSU had built a five-point lead 51-46; only to see the Broncos tie it up at 51-51 with 5:53 to play.  The Jacks pushed the advantage to 57-51 a minute later.

Petty hit a jumper with 3:50 to go for a 59-54 lead for HSU and over the next three minutes Taylor took over the game scoring four points grabbing two rebounds and blocking a shot.

At the 1:13 mark Colson hit a 3-pointer to slice the Jacks lead to four at 65-61, but a Petty jumper with 50 seconds ended the Pomona hopes.

“It feels good to contribute as a freshman,” Petty said.   “The win against UCSD allowed me to move beyond the jitters that I'd had. I have confidence in myself and I think my teammates have confidence in me to take big shots and make them. When you make a critical shot, the feeling you have afterward is really the best.”

“We dug ourselves a hole with those two losses last week,” Gleason said.  “I thought we showed a lot of character the way we came out and competed.  We played and fought so differently than we did last weekend. 

“This is a huge game.  It's not just that Pomona is regionally ranked and ahead of us in the conference, but we showed ourselves that we can bounce back and we showed what we are made of.”

The Jacks return to action on Saturday night for their final regular season home game.  They will host the Cal State San Bernardino Coyotes in a 5:30 p.m. tipoff. 

The game is Senior Night.  Brittney Taylor, Andrea Bobic, Paige Peterson and Luiza Osborne will be honored in a ceremony prior to tipoff.
 
The Lumberjacks, in conjunction with the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) Pink Zone® initiative, will wear pink for breast cancer awareness during for the game as well.