Women snap losing streak

Staff Reports
The Collegian

The Fresno State women’s basketball team was in a must-win situation Saturday against Nevada.

The Bulldogs entered the contest on a three-game losing streak, having lost five of their previous six games and having dropped from third in the conference to eighth.

Amy Parrish and Chantella Perera scored 20 points apiece and Fresno State won its must-win, beating Nevada 75-67 at Lawlor Events Center in Reno. The win improved Fresno State’s record to 12-6 (4-5 Western Athletic Conference) and bumped the Bulldogs up into a sixth-place tie in the conference with Hawaii.

The Bulldogs seemed at times to be doing their best to give away Saturday’s game, committing 28 turnovers, 18 in the first half.

Luckily for the Bulldogs, Nevada did a better job of blowing the game. The Wolf Pack failed to capitalize on Fresno State’s mistakes, scoring only 11 points off turnovers, and shot 38.9 percent for the game while the Bulldogs shot 49 percent, the best the team has shot since its 74-64 win over Long Island on Dec. 20, and scored 17 points off Nevada’s 24 turnovers.

The Bulldogs also won the rebounding battle, 40-29. It was the sixth game in a row Fresno State outrebounded its opponents, but only the second win.

Amber Young led four Nevada players in double figures, scoring 15 points, including a perfect 6 for 6 from the free throw line. Cherlanda Franklin and Meghan McGuire each had 14 for the Wolf Pack, and April Bankston scored 10.

The Bulldogs’ Jasmine Plummer, in her second straight start, scored 16 points and added an exclamation point to Saturday’s game by swatting a meaningless Talisha Anderson 3-pointer into the Lawlor seats with one second left in the game.

Early in the game, neither team could build a substantial lead, as the game see-sawed back and forth.

The first half saw six ties and nine lead changes. Neither team was able to build a first-half lead of more than four points until the Bulldogs closed the half on a 17-5 run over the last four and a half minutes to take a 38-29 lead into halftime.

Fresno State never trailed again in the game and built a second-half lead as big as 13 points on the strength of three straight 3s from Perera and five points from Parrish during a stretch of just more than four minutes.

Notebook: For only the third time since it joined the conference in 2001-02, the Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters lost a Western Athletic Conference game.

Boise State, ninth in the conference, handed Louisiana Tech its first conference loss of the year.

Junior guard Benita Buggs hit a 3-pointer with 1.2 seconds left to give the Broncos a 62-59 win over the Techsters on Thursday.

Rice is the only other WAC team to beat Louisiana Tech, winning in 2002 and again in 2004.

The Techsters bounced back from the loss to beat Texas-El Paso 82-69 on Saturday.

Fresno State plays the Techsters on Thursday in Ruston, La. Earlier this season, Louisiana Tech beat Fresno State 80-70.