UC Santa Barbara Beats Idaho for Title, 68-51
Another year and another Gaucho Invitational comes to an end with another UC Santa Barbara championship in what is officially known as the Big West Conference women’s basketball tournament.
This time the Gauchos, behind 25 points from tournament most valuable player Lindsay Taylor and 19 from all-tournament teammate Kristen Mann, buried a youthful and hardy Idaho team, 68-51.Taylor, a 6-8 center, became only the second person in tournament history to be named MVP three consecutive times.
But that’s the way it has gone for the better part of a decade. Saturday afternoon’s victory at the Anaheim Convention Center gave the Gauchos their 23rd consecutive conference tournament victory dating to 1997. They have 10 conference tournament titles overall and eight straight.
Junior Heather Thoelke scored 16 points for Idaho (22-7) which will lose only one senior. But the nation’s leading scorer and the conference’s regular-season MVP, sophomore Emily Faurholt, had only 15 points, 11.1 shy of her average and most scored when the game was far out of reach.
The Vandals, who finished second in the regular season behind Santa Barbara with the school’s best record in nearly two decades, didn’t score for the first six minutes 32 seconds and never appeared to be in the game. A lot of that had to do with Taylor’s patrolling the key.
“It will be nice to have Lindsay Taylor gone,” said Thoelke, a 6-foot wing. “Being 6-8, that’s tough to play against.”
Taylor set the tone early offensively too. She made the first three baskets for UC Santa Barbara (25-6). But when she sat down with her second foul at the 12:39 mark and Santa Barbara leading, 10-2, her teammates extended the lead to 23-9 over the next 4 1/2 minutes.
After opening the season with a difficult nonconference slate that was part of a 9-5 start that included an 84-80 loss at Idaho, UC Santa Barbara has regrouped to win 16 of its last 17 games. The Gauchos won 16 consecutive games against conference opponents. Their only setback was a 76-61 nonconference loss at USC on Feb. 26.
UC Santa Barbara can get on to the real business at hand, playing host to the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament next weekend, when the Thunderdome is expected to provide a decisive advantage. After all, this is a program, unlike other Big West teams, that attempts to peak for the NCAA tournament, not the conference championships.
“This team is going straight up right now,” Mann said. “We have a good week of practice ahead of us. Whoever we get [in the tournament], I’m scared for them.
“They’re playing us on our home court. I know from my experience last year that it’s not fun playing someone on their home court.”