Glendora, CA (Women’s Basketball) -- If stealing is a crime, then the Citrus College women’s basketball team should have been locked up on Wednesday night, as they swiped 29 steals (including a season and career high 11 steals for sophomore Shateah West) and forced the visiting Santa Monica College Corsairs into 40 turnovers, in a convincing 86-56 win.
In what was a sort of grudge match for the Lady Owls (Santa Monica beat Citrus at their place 82-65 back on January 17th), Citrus wasted little time in making a statement scoring the first 12 points of the game taking a 12-0 lead after back to back free-throws by West at the 13:09 mark.
Santa Monica wouldn’t even get on the board, until a Jewell Morris jumper gave them their first two points of the night with 12:43 left in the first half.
The Corsairs would respond to their breaking through by pulling to within 6-points of the Citrus lead with just over ten to go, but the Lady Owls responded with a dominating 19-2 run that gave Citrus a commanding 37-14 lead after a jumper by Terri Washington and a pair of free-throws from Jazmine Matthews.
Citrus would continue to keep their lead at 20 plus points through the remainder of the half, and continued to build on it in the second. After Santa Monica opened up the second half, but scoring 14 of the first 16 points of the half, Citrus went back into attack mode pushing their lead back to 21 points after a fast break lay-up by Jessica Nieves with just under ten minutes to play.
Citrus’ lead would grow to as large as 34 points after a jumper by Bianca Nunez, before the Lady Owls settled in for their 30-point victory.
In the win, Citrus was led by Nunez who poured in a career high 21 points on 8 of 12 shooting, while Nieves added 19. Sophomore Terri Washington continued to keep up her strong effort as grabbed a game high 10 points and scored 13 points.
With the win, Citrus improves to 20-10 overall and 6-4 in WSC South Division play, while Santa Monica falls to 10-14 overall and 6-3 in conference play. The win, puts the Lady Owls’ playoff hopes on life support, with visiting Glendale College coming to the Owls Nest on Saturday night. Tip-off is set for 7:00 PM.
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