Women off to best start in program's history

By NATHAN HATHAWAY

If the Fresno State women’s basketball team continues at this rate, by the end of the season, every player will have led the team in scoring for at least one game.

In the Bulldogs’ 68-43 win over San Diego at the Save Mart Center on Sunday, senior Aritta Lane matched her career high with 25 points to become the Bulldogs’ fifth leading scorer in as many games this season.

“Aritta is great for the kind of basketball we play,” coach Stacy Johnson-Klein said. “It’s quick. It’s opportunistic.”

And Lane loves playing that type of game.

“That was just the type of game we played. We just ran,” Lane said. “I like to run. It’s my kind of style of play.”

But Lane paid the price. The senior forward came out of the locker room after the game with ice bags wrapped around her knees.

After jokingly saying she needed the ice because “I’m a senior,” Lane explained away the bags by saying it was because she was running so much.

The win was the Bulldogs’ fifth straight, tying the school record set in 1971 for most consecutive wins to open a season.

“It’s about time we came out here and had other teams finally look at us and say, ‘hey, they’re on top.’

Today we just made something bigger in the books. Next game, we’ve got to do something even bigger.”

Johnson-Klein is cautious about getting too far ahead of herself, but if this week’s games against Washington State (on Thursday) and UCLA (on Saturday) go how she hopes, the coach thinks her team deserves more national recognition.

“If we win this weekend, absolutely we deserve a top-25 ranking. I think we need that to get a look into the (NCAA) tournament.

The Bulldogs haven’t been in the national rankings since 1987, when Fresno State got as high as 21.

The Bulldogs took awhile to get into the flow of Sunday’s game, falling behind 17-11 early on.

“We were shots and we weren’t dictating on defense,” Johnson-Klein said. “They exposed our weakness and they scored.” The Toreros shot 4 for 5 from 3-point range, and 8 for 12 overall, in the opening 10 minutes.

But something changed—quickly and drastically.

The Bulldogs closed out the first half on a 17-4 run to take a 32-24 halftime lead.

In the second half, the Bulldogs put away the Toreros, holding San Diego scoreless for the final six minutes of the game.

“We huddled up and we decided we needed to go ahead and beat this team,” said point guard Mirenda Swearengin, who finished with 16 points, nine rebounds and six assists. “We were playing together. It really pumped me up.”

The Bulldogs also outmuscled San Diego on the glass, outrebounding the Toreros 55-26.