The City College women’s basketball team dropped 13 threes to advance to the second round of the playoffs, beating Oxnard 74-61.
The first round ended with a bang for City College, with a bounce-back game from the three-point line.
“We’ve been on a dry spell lately (from the three-point line), and it felt great to get back into rhythm,” head coach Sandrine Krul said.
The Vaqueros attempted 36 3-pointers and shot 36.1 percent compared to Oxnard’s 3-12 on 25 percent shooting from deep.
Over half of the team’s points (39 out of 74) came from the three-point line.
According to Krul, the game plan was to launch threes and run the ball because Oxnard was running a 2-3 zone defense.
The Vaqueros were aggressively pushing the ball in transition, scoring 22 points off of turnovers compared to Oxnard’s 7.
At the beginning of the game, Vaquero players Aaliyah Pauling and Jada Forsdick-Stevenson did their best to emulate the Golden State Warriors famous “Splash Brothers” by knocking down five threes in five attempts—in only the first five minutes of the game.
City College had a total of six threes in the first quarter alone.
“I was in a slump, but my teammates had my back,” Forsdick-Stevenson said about her five for ten comeback shooting from the three-point line.
With seven minutes remaining in the third quarter, Krul called a timeout and reminded her team to “know who the hot hands are.”
Directly afterward, Forsdick-Stevenson rained in her fourth and fifth threes of the game.
Krul said that Forsdick-Stevenson had been shooting well in practice recently and knew she could go off from the three-point arch this game.
“I wasn’t planning on missing them,” Forsdick-Stevenson said.
Freshman Sierra Cavaletto and sophomore Maaria Jaakkola had strong second halves to extend the lead and finish the game with a double-digit lead.
The Vaqueros only had a 6 point advantage heading into the fourth quarter.
Cavaletto gave them an energy boost in the fourth, hitting jumpers, making plays on defense, and pushing the ball.
Cavaletto attributed her energy and success in the fourth to her teammates on the court and on the bench.
“The energy I already had was just increased by them,” she said.
The first round is over but the second round is looming over the minds of the Vaqueros.
It will only be increasingly challenging for the matchups to come for City College in the playoffs.
“Now we start the hard part of the conference, and we’re ready for it,” coach Krul said.
The City College women’s basketball team plays its next game at 7 p.m. on Saturday versus Ventura on City College turf.
Click here to see the Vaquero’s remaining schedule for the season.
