UC Irvine Suffers Two Big Losses

The record will show that Big West Conference Western Division champion UC Santa Barbara out-muscled and out-ran UC Irvine for a 79-66 women’s basketball victory in front of 396 spectators Thursday night at the Bren Center.

But the tone of the game was set in the training room.

UCI (15-10, 10-4), which finished second in the division behind the Gauchos, was without starting point guard Megan Stafford, the team’s second-leading scorer. Her season is in doubt after being diagnosed with the beginnings of a stress fracture in her left foot. Stafford will sit out the Anteaters’ final regular-season game Sunday against Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and be re-examined Monday by a doctor.

Junior Princess Hatcher filled in for Stafford and scored 16 points to lead the Anteaters, who saw their five-game winning streak snapped. But without Stafford in the lineup, UCI struggled early offensively, turned over the ball 12 times in the first half and fell behind by as many as 21 points early in the second.

Santa Barbara (23-5, 14-1), which won its 12th consecutive game, has its share of bumps and bruises to worry about, too. Sophomore forward Kristi Rohr, who missed the last two games with a bad right knee, returned and scored 12 points in 30 minutes. But she played with the injury heavily taped and favored it on several occasions.

Erin Buescher, a 6-foot-3 freshman who is the odds-on favorite to win conference player of the year honors, scored 32 points and had eight rebounds, but she hobbled off the floor with 4:32 left after twisting her right ankle.

Both teams had already clinched conference tournament berths and Coach Mark French said he would have liked to rest most of his starting five in this game. But he felt he couldn’t.

“Unfortunately, I have to worry about [national ratings],” He said. “If we get upset in the conference tournament, we need 24 wins so we can be [considered for an NCAA berth]. So, we didn’t approach this game the way we would have liked to. We had to play our best players and I hope that doesn’t turn out to be a stupid thing.”

In another Big West game:

Cal State Fullerton 87, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo 74--Andrea Thieme scored a game-high 24 points and Natascha Stokely and Kris Sigg added 18 points apiece for host Cal State Fullerton. The Titans (10-16, 7-8) were 31 of 45 from on free throws and 25 of 54 from the field.