News|Schedule / Results|Roster|Officers &Coaches|

UCSB Rebounds With Win Over Pepperdine

Box Score

Apr. 10, 2010

Santa Barbara, CA - The Gauchos rebounded from a tough loss last weekend with a 16-3 win over unranked Pepperdine in Harder Stadium in the last home game for five seniors. All week UCSB had to stomach a 21-9 pasting at 3rd ranked Cal Poly SLO but came out confident and poised against Pepperdine today. It was 10-1 in favor of the Gauchos at halftime even though UCSB slowed it down and settled the ball on offense almost every possession. The slow down strategy is new for UCSB.

"Our game plan changed a little bit starting with this game to prepare us to avoid track meet styles of play in the near future," said UCSB head coach Paul Ramsey after the game.

"We want to make sure we can possess the ball and work for good shots when we need to do it later to win post-season games."

UCSB borrowed from a common basketball strategy where teams often push the fastbreak after a steal but following made baskets by the other team they mostly just aim to get it across half court and run their offense. Similarly, the Gauchos will look to goal early after possessions on the center draw and to push the fastbreak off turnovers but will settle into their offense when they have to clear the ball the full 100 yards up the field onto offense after saves.

Even with the slow down approach the Gauchos outshot the Waves 37-12.

"We're still going to look at our numbers in transition compared to how many of the other team get back on defense but in general if it's all even or we have to get it up the entire field we're going to settle in on offense and focus on moving the ball to generate something good for ourselves," added Ramsey.

UCSB seniors Maggie Aker (Oakland, CA) and Sam Lutz (San Diego, CA) led all scorers with 7 points each. Aker got hers on 5 goals and 2 assists while Lutz tallied hers with 3 goals and 4 assists. Senior defender Monora Seth (San Diego, CA) snagged her first two goals of the season when some of the Gauchos flip-flopped positions during the second half. While playing attack Seth scored the first two goals after the break on assisted scoring plays. The defender got involved in the picking game and came off a pick to receive a feed from Lutz 1:15 into the second half. Four minutes later on a similar look Seth took another feed from Lutz and put it away too.

Sophomore Jeni Centner (Tustin, CA) had 6 saves while allowing only 3 goals. Junior midfielder Ashley Antoon-Algieri (San Ramon, CA) had 4 draw controls focusing mostly on midfield play and defense for this game instead of offense. Antoon-Algieri also caused 4 turnovers and came up with 3 ground balls. Junior Alyssa Nelsen (Denver, CO) was another Gaucho who is normally involved in the offense but gave way to seniors wanting some action at the attacking end. Nelsen had 2 caused turnovers, 4 ground balls and 1 draw control instead.

UCSB improved to 11-2 overall and 3-1 in WWLL Central for a share of the Central regular season title with Cal Poly SLO and UCLA, who upset Cal Poly SLO today in a 14-13 nail biter. Pepperdine dropped to 3-9 overall and 0-4 in WWLL Central with their last game of the season at UCLA on Sunday.

The Gauchos await word from the Western Women's Lacrosse League for their seed in the WWLL Championship Tournament April 17-18 at UCLA. UCSB expects to receive a 3rd or 4th seed. The top five seeds are a jumble on the surface with UCSB having beaten UCLA 14-5, Cal Poly SLO beating UCSB 21-9 and UCLA beating Cal Poly SLO 14-13. That creates a three way tie for first in the WWLL Central. Meanwhile, in the WWLL North UC Davis upset top ranked Santa Clara 17-16 in overtime last weekend. UCSB beat UC Davis 19-18 in while Santa Clara beat UCSB 12-11 in inter-region games. It makes for multiple nests of three way ties for the WWLL to sort through when putting the seeding together for the 1st through 8th seeded event. All five of these North and Central teams are undefeated against WWLL South teams so it looks like the three teams from the South will receive the 6th - 8th seeds.

The WWLL Championship truly seems to be up for grabs for at least the top 5 of the 8 teams that will be participating.