The NAIA No. 8-ranked Sea Lions won their regular season finale on Saturday, defeating The Master's 83-62 in Golden Gym. PLNU heads into the postseason with a 26-3 overall mark and a third place finish in conference at 17-3. The Sea Lions will host a first-round playoff game on Wednesday at 7:30 pm. Their likely opponent is Westmont College.
PLNU pulled out the victory Saturday despite being without senior Colleen Planeta. The leading scorer in the nation was out due to an ankle injury sustained Tuesday. The team's other senior, Liah Ector, made sure the Sea Lions didn't miss a beat by scoring 25 points and grabbing 12 rebounds. Ector, who was named the NAIA Player of the Week on Tuesday, was 11-for-11 from the stripe and made seven buckets from the field.
The Green and Gold also got glimpses on how the future front and back courts will look perform. Leading the forwards was Kaitlyn Trotter who scored 10 points and pulled in 12 rebounds. Sophomore PJ Hanson added nine points and four assists, freshman Jil Haentges added nine points and freshman Andrea Campbell scored four to go with five boards.
Junior guard Amanda Franz scored 17 points and dished out three assists. Sophomore Brianna Colon added nine points in the win.
The Mustangs were paced by 12 points from Jenna Reed. Erica Inge added 10 points with Lena Rivera and Brook Bekendam contributing nine and eight points, respectively. Brittany Gillespie led TMC with nine rebounds.
The Sea Lions came out of the gate quickly to take a 12-point lead just seven and a half minutes into the game. The Master's fought back and slowly cut into the deficit to just two points. At intermission it was PLNU in front 34-30.
The second stanza belonged to the Sea Lions. Loma's lead was back to double-digits eight minutes in and it just kept growing, reaching 20 at the seven with seven minutes left and to a game-high 28 at 4:01. Both sides emptied their benches for the remainder of the game.
Neither side shot particularly well Saturday. PLNU was good on 28-of-66 for a 42.4 percentage while TMC was just 22-for-64 (34.4 percent). The Sea Lions had advantages in rebounds (53-31), free throws (21-15), threes (6-3) and assists (15-12).
The Mustangs (15-12, 10-9) have one more game on the docket, at Fresno Pacific this Monday. TMC is currently fifth in the GSAC standings.
