ARCATA – It was a tale of two halves in Saturday's California Collegiate Athletic Association matchup between Humboldt State and Cal State East Bay. Once again, it took a while for the Lumberjacks to get the ball rolling—trailing for much of the first half— but once the Jacks warmed up, they took off and there was no stopping them. HSU ultimately beat the Pioneers by 22 points 66-44. 

After dropping to Cal State Monterey Bay on Friday, the Jacks regrouped to grab the win, improving their overall record to 5-1, 2-1 in conference action. The Pioneers fall to 2-4 overall, 0-2 in the CCAA, with the loss.

"It's always nice to get a win on the road," said head coach Joddie Gleason. "It takes courage to bounce back from a loss like ours against CSUMB. When you get beat up, it's good to have short memory and we rebounded well tonight."

Humboldt State didn't score a point in the run of play until nine minutes into the contest when Whitney Howard finished a jumper to put the Jacks within two at 6-4, to which Patrice Saindon added two more to tie the game at 6-6. The half bounced back between the Pioneers and the Lumberjacks with neither team obtaining more than a three-point lead, finishing the half tied at 20-20.

Whatever Gleason said to her team at halftime must have worked as HSU came back to outshoot CSUEB 46-to-24 in the second half. 

"I tried to stay calm and just wanted to get us regrouped," said Gleason about her halftime talk. "I told them to keep up the intensity on defense, we kept them to 20 points in first half so that was good, but we just needed to be more aggressive on offense."

Four Jacks finished in double figures, led by Lisa Petty with 16 points and eight rebounds. Lexxi Price wasn't far behind with 15 points and Howard grabbed her fifth double-digit scoring game with 11 points. Patrice Saindon rounded out the group with 12 points, shooting 5-for-6 from the floor and 2-for-3 from beyond the arc.

"I thought Lexxie and Patrice came out with a lot of energy in the first half," said Gleason. "We gave them the start in the second half and they played great for us."

Saindon sparked the offense for the Jacks in the second half, assisting Price's three-point basket with one of her five assists of the night. Saindon also collected five steals, all of which led to points for the Lumberjacks.

"When you focus on defense, the offense will come," said Saindon. "We just did us and it was a good team win."

The Jacks went on a 14-point run, starting with 8:34 on the clock, to put HSU up with its largest point margin at 61-37 with 5:41 left to play. Saindon sunk both of her three-point shots back-to-back in the run and Price added another to start the drive with nine points.

"We knew what we had to do, we just had to play our game," said Saindon. "We worked hard on defense, that's what we were focusing on, and we did that pretty well the first half but they were just out-rebounding us on the offensive boards. We worked as a team, we all came together and it worked out."

Worked out it did as the Jacks finished the night with a 52.4 shooting percentage, finishing 15 of 23 shots from the field to give HSU its biggest win of the young season. Humboldt State returns Saturday for a non-conference matchup against Western Oregon with a tipoff time of 2 p.m.