The Sea Lions dropped to No. 5 in the NAIA rankings, but easily handled conference competitors San Diego Christian, 77-41 in Golden Gym Tuesday. The Sea Lions, who were ranked second, improved to 22-2 overall and 13-2 in the Golden State Athletic Conference, while the Hawks dropped to 4-19 on the season and 1-13 in GSAC.

The ratings drop was a result of PLNU's loss to the Vanguard Lions last Tuesday, who were ranked No. 5 at the time and jumped over the Sea Lions and are now ranked No. 3. PLNU has rebounded with two wins since then over Fresno Pacific and SDCC.

PLNU hit 50 percent of its shots Tuesday but held the Hawks, who had 12 more attempts, to 21.9 percent. The Sea Lions helped keep SDCC's numbers low with eight steals and 11 blocks, including eight from senior forward Colleen Planeta who was selected as Amateur Star of the Month of January by the San Diego Hall of Champions. She also led the PLNU offense with 21 points.

Despite scoring first and never trailing, some Sea Lions thought they could have come out stronger from the tip off.

“We kind of had a slow start,” said junior guard Amanda Franz. “But we started to pick it up in the first half and we were able to change the momentum of the game.”

PLNU went into halftime with the biggest lead of the game to that point, up by 14.

Any notion of a slow start was behind the Sea Lions in the second half, as the team came out of the locker room to score 13 unanswered points and expand the lead to 27. The Green and Gold added nine points to their lead by the end of the game for the 77-41 final.

In addition to Planeta, two Sea Lions shot double digits. Franz bucketed 15 and senior guard Liah Ector had 10 -- a repeat of the same three Sea Lions who shot double digits in Saturday's game versus Fresno Pacific.

SDCC senior guard Torreya Edwards had 10 points and was the only Hawk to break into double digits.

The Sea Lions' conference competition gets more difficult Saturday, as the team will head to Azusa to take on the No. 9-ranked Cougars. That will be the final time that PLNU faces a current top-25 team for the remainder of the season. The Sea Lions currently trail APU by a half game in the conference standings and are up by a half game over Vanguard.

“It's going to be a really big test, but if we come out and play our game we're going to have a shot at winning it,” said Franz.

The game begins at 5:30 p.m.

-Nathan Scharn