Bulldogs down Spartans
Andrew Riggs / The Collegian
The Bulldogs’ Chantella Perera did more than chip in by contributing 20 points in a 77–60 victory.
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By Maggie Thach
The Collegian
It could be seen in subtle gestures.
Amy Parrish and Brittani Green embracing each other after Green got fouled. Chantella Perera pointing at one of her teammates after a made basket. Tierre Wilson wincing after getting called for her fourth foul.
Emotions were running high and the stakes are raised even higher with the season winding down.
“Those little things get us motivated,” said Perera, who had 20 points and seven assists. “We’ve got three games left and our seniors have played a lot. We want to send them out the right way.”
The Bulldogs are well on their way to their best regular season record as they are sitting at 11-2 (19-6 overall) with a 77-60 win over San Jose State (5-7 WAC, 10-13 overall) on Monday night.
The final score was no indication of how the Bulldogs played in the first half. They were getting outrebounded and outplayed.
In the first half alone, San Jose State’s Amber Jackson had 14 points going 6-for-6 from the field, helping her team take a 31-28 lead into halftime.
“It was said at halftime: they’re getting second-chance points and we’re missing easy opportunities,” said the team’s leading scorer Amy Parrish with 22. “A lot of it is we know ourselves. We feed off each other.
We just needed to pick it up.”
The Bulldogs took back the lead not more than four minutes into the second half but wasn’t able to push the lead to double digits until 2:55 left in the game.
Every time Fresno State got the lead to 7 or 8, the Spartans would push it back to 4 or 5. Jackson and Lamisha Augustine refused to let their Spartans go away as they both scored 10 points in the second half.
But Fresno State had too many offensive weapons for the Spartans to keep up with down the stretch.
Parrish went to work down low and Perera, Mirenda Swearengin and Tierre Wilson were all capable three-point shooters.
With the balanced attack, Fresno State outscored the Spartans 49-29 in the latter half.
San Jose State looked like they might catch up to the Bulldogs after Brittany Imaku made a 3 to counter Wilson’s 3, cutting Fresno State’s lead back down to 7. But on the ensuing play, Swearengin made a long-range shot of her own, keeping the lead at double-digits for good.
From there it was a free-throw shooting contest. Fresno State made 26 out of 34 attempts, getting to the line 24 more times than San Jose State did.
“I like the fact that we won with a lot of energy and effort,” said Adrian Wiggins, who is now 16-1 at the Save Mart Center since taking the interim head coaching position. “San Jose State did a great job countering everything we did.”
Fresno State will have three games left to tighten up their game before the WAC tournament. The Bulldogs will travel to Boise State before coming home to end the season against WAC cellar-dweller Utah State and Nevada, one of only two teams that have beaten the Bulldogs this season.
“It would be nice if we can go into the tournament like this,” Parrish said. “We’ll get better if we keep doing what we’re doing but we need to pick it up in the first half. We’re stilling going to play our game [against the last three teams]. We’re not going to focus on any one individual player. We like to think what we do works against everybody.”
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