This Time, Golden West Beats Fresno City, 68-55

Golden West’s quarterfinal game in the women’s State basketball tournament was as much a chance to judge the improvement of the team as it was anything else.

The Rustlers were up against Fresno City, a team that had blasted the Rustlers in the regular season.

But this time around, a more mature Golden West came away with a 68-55 victory in the quarterfinal game Thursday at Ventura College.

It was the 25th consecutive victory for the Rustlers (35-2), making their seventh consecutive trip to the State Tournament.

The Rustlers won titles in 1990 an 1991 and reached the semifinals last season before losing to College of the Sequoias. Lassen beat Sequoias for the title.

Golden West had lost to Fresno, 96-79, Dec. 5 in the ninth game of this season.

“We’ve said all along we were a team of role players,” Golden West co-coach Dave Stricklin said. “That (the loss to Fresno City) was so early in the season we didn’t know what our roles were yet.”

This time around, Golden West pulled away about midway in the first half and led, 37-25, at the break.

Golden West continued to lead by about 10 early on in the second half and increased it to 51-36 with 10 minutes 4 seconds left.

Fresno City (26-10) rallied to within eight twice after that.

The second time came after Datri Elliott had a steal then pulled up to hit a three-pointer to make the score 63-55 with 2:20 left.

But Fresno City didn’t score again.

Melanie Iwamasa had 20 points and Frances Oda added 19 for Golden West. Iwamasa, the Orange Empire Conference’s most valuable player, had 13 in the first half.

Cinnamon Basco added 16 points and 17 rebounds from Golden West, despite playing around foul trouble most of the second half. She improved her Golden West single-season rebound record to 471.

Golden West advances to play Hancock in one semifinal at 6 tonight. Hancock beat Golden West, 74-67, earlier this season.

Hancock reached the semifinal round with an 82-76 overtime victory over Orange Coast.

“We’re going to have to play about 100 times better against Hancock that we did tonight,” Stricklin said.