There Is No Bucking These Broncos : Cal Poly Pomona’s Women’s Basketball Program Just Keeps Rolling Along

Sitting atop the NCAA Division II basketball world is becoming routine for the Cal Poly Pomona women.

Last week the Broncos won their second straight NCAA Division II crown. They have made the division finals in four of the last five years and won three titles.

Maybe they’re just having one of those decades.

Some have suggested that Coach Darlene May should take her team to Division I and quit beating up on their poor little schools.

After losing to Pomona, 66-44, in the West Regional final this season, Cal State Northridge Coach Leslie Milke said: “If I never saw Pomona again, it would be fine with me.”

The win was Pomona’s fourth of the season against the Lady Matadors and 22nd straight, dating to 1976. The Broncos have similar streaks against most of the Division II schools on the West Coast.

While Milke and others may be wishing that the Broncos would move up to Division I, May said the chance of that is slim.

“It’s just a question of money,” May said. “We just don’t have it. We’ve had success against Division I teams, but I think that in the long run we would just get swallowed up (financially).”

May, whose team has won 35 straight games against Division II competition, prefers being a Division II powerhouse instead of a face in the crowd in Division I.

“Why not be the big fish in a small pond?” May said. “Who wants to be a small fish and get eaten?”

May does not mind being in Division II as long as she can recruit the type of players she has in the past.

“As long as we can recruit that borderline (Division I) athlete who wants to play for a national champion and be an All-American (at any level), I think we can continue to be strong at this level,” she said.

That has not been a problem for May, who has received a verbal commitment from promising 6-1 center Nikky Bracken of Compton for next season and is hoping to land three other players.

But that’s next year. May is still thinking about this season.

The fact that the Broncos won another title will not go down as the surprise of the year, since Pomona was ranked No. 1 in Division II all season.

But May wasn’t about to say ho-hum.

“It’s a great feeling any time you win a title,” she said. “It’s what we’ve been working for all year.”

May, who has produced a Division II-record mark of 312-78 (.800), said that all of her championship teams have been different.

“Our first (in 1982) was an extremely good shooting team led by Lisa Ulmer, Carol Welch, Jackie White, Diane Looker and Jeannette Tjaarda. Our second (1985) was virtually a slow-down, patient type of team led by Vickie Mitchell, Janine Phillips, Sheri Jennum and Kelley Fraser. And this year’s team was a quick-running type of team.”

The coach said quickness made the difference this season.

“This team had great quickness and the ability to pass very well,” she said. “I haven’t had those qualities in a lot of teams.”

The leader was Mitchell, a 6-0 senior center who was named Division II player of the year by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Assn. Mitchell, who averaged a team-high 15 points and 11.2 rebounds and led in steals (127) and shooting percentage (53.4%), will be honored at a breakfast in Lexington, Ky., on Saturday.

Mitchell finished her four years as the career leader in rebounds for the school and the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. with 1,202.

“Her statistics in four years are not the most fantastic thing you’ve ever seen,” May said. “But she has meant so much more to the program. If I would have played her 40 minutes a game, her stats would have been a lot more impressive.”

Mitchell’s importance may have been most noticeable in Pomona’s 70-63 win over North Dakota State in the championship game, when she played only 17 minutes because of foul trouble but finished with 14 points.

“When she was in there we were a different team,” May said. “We were blowing them away, and when she went out they got back in it.”

With Mitchell on the bench, the Broncos relied on the scoring and rebounding of 5-10 junior forward Debra Larsen, who finished with 19 points and 11 rebounds.

Larsen, named the most valuable player of the tournament, may have saved her best for Pomona’s last two games, when she totaled 41 points and 23 rebounds.

“She came into her own in the tournament,” May said.