Sonoma State Star

Issue date: 3/18/08 Section: Sports

Genny Anderson (23) and the Seawolves won 20 games en route to another appearance in the NCAA Tournament. Despite being led by a trio of spectacular seniors, SSU was unable to overcome University of Alaska-Anchorage, ending their season in 70-53 loss in the first round of the West Regionals [Click to enlarge]

The #6 seeded Sonoma State University women's basketball team was eliminated from the NCAA Tournament after it lost to #3 seed University of Alaska-Anchorage 70-53 on Fri. Mar. 14 in the first round of the NCAA West Regional in Seattle.

According to SSU head coach Mark Rigby, the Seawolves could not handle UAA's physical level of play.

"They played a lot of man-to-man, and they played very physical with a lot of holding and pushing," Rigby said. "At the beginning of the game we were able to handle it but at the end of the game they wore us down."

With the loss, the team closes out its year with an overall record of 20-10 (13-7 CCAA).

The Seawolves had the lead for the first 15 minutes of the game and were still in the game at halftime, trailing by a score of 30-24. However, Alaska Anchorage had built up its lead to fifteen points by the 16:30 mark in the second half, leading 43-28, and SSU couldn't recover

"It was not our best effort from an execution standpoint," Rigby said. "We weren't 100 percent healthy physically and last week we had three players who didn't practice the whole week, but the bottom line is that they were a better team than we are, and we didn't sit around and talk about it (after the game), they beat us and they go on, and we go home."

The leading scorer for SSU was senior Genny Anderson, who had 11 points, all scored in the first half. Senior Danae Wellander had 10 points on 4-15 shooting, also adding four rebounds, four assists and three steals. Fellow senior Chelsey Armacost had nine points and freshman Olivia Larkin had nine points on 3-4 shooting.

Continued...

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