Golden West Women’s Basketball Sidelined

Golden West will not have a women’s basketball team for the Orange Empire Conference season because of a lack of players, Athletic Director Tom Hermstad said Wednesday.

Hermstad said in October the team wasn’t going to play its nonconference schedule. However, he had hoped Coach Jim Greenfield would find more students willing to play by the end of the fall semester.

The program is expected to be revived for the 1997-98 season. Saddleback, also citing a lack of players, suspended its program this year.

This leaves the remaining six Orange Empire Conference teams--Cypress, Fullerton, Irvine Valley, Orange Coast, Rancho Santiago and Riverside--with 10 conference games instead of 14 over seven weeks starting Jan. 8. Missing four games also could hurt teams in the playoffs because total victories are part of the power-rating format used to seed teams.

“It’s awful,” Orange Coast Coach Mike Thornton said. “They should have made the decision one way or the other earlier. This gives none of us a chance to schedule more games.”