SAN DIEGO – The Sea Lions hosted the Golden Eagles of Cal State LA in their first matchup of the Thanksgiving Classic hosted in Golden Gymnasium. The Sea Lions got out to an early 8-0 lead, finding some easy buckets inside but Cal State LA would find their offense and the Sea Lions would lead by six, 17-11 at the end of the first quarter. Point Loma would extend the lead to 32-23 at the half while shooting 38.9% from the floor.
 
Point Loma would push their lead to 10 early in the third quarter before the Golden Eagles cut the lead to one on two separate occasions. The Sea Lions closed out the third quarter outscoring Cal State LA by nine to take a 51-41 lead. The momentum was in favor of the Sea Lions by the fourth quarter and they were able to extend their lead to as much as 20, before closing the game out with a 73-54 win.
 
Roya Rustamzada just missed her sixth straight double-double, but put up great numbers with 16 points, nine rebounds, six assists, and three steals. Alex Brunk would score 12 for the Sea Lions, while Tayla Hepburn added 10 points and nine rebounds. Point Loma also got great contributions from two of their freshman, Sydney Peterson and Cara Liggins each scored nine points with Liggins pulling down 8 boards as well. Stephanie Williams hit a couple big threes for the Sea Lions shooting 50% from the field and going 2-for-2 from beyond the arc.
 
Team Records
Point Loma (5-1), Cal State LA (2-5)
 
The Turning Point
The Golden Eagles cut the Sea Lion lead to one point midway through the third quarter. Point Loma would go on a 15-6 run to close out the quarter and take a 10 point lead to push the game out of reach for Cal State LA.
 
Thoughts from Coach Faulkner
On the balanced scoring effort and ball movement: "We are a great ball movement team and I expect our assists numbers to be around that every single game. We had a goal of at least 15 assists, we reached that as well as having a 2:1 assist to turnover ratio which is awesome. I love that we are a team who has several players who can score but they don't care who does the scoring."

On the defensive effort: "After watching the film, we saw that we had really made some mistakes in the Northwest Nazarene game and they made us pay for those. While we still made some mistakes tonight, we did a much better job of keeping our hands up and playing our style of defense causing them to have 16 turnovers and shoot 27%. Again, we are a very good defensive team and this is what I expect from us."

On key minutes from Williams and Schroeder: "Steph played great, it was nice to get her going. Her and Carol did well coming off of the bench, Carol is our energy player who flies around and gets tips and steals and can get us fast break points. Steph is just a solid guard and it was nice to have her knock down some open jump shots and grab big rebounds. Hopefully this will help with her confidence coming back from an ankle injury."

On the importance of getting a solid win, leading wire-to-wire: "We have been talking about our energy and intensity at the beginning of games, it was much better today getting out to an 8-0 lead. Instead of me having to pull energy out of the team, they brought their own energy and hopefully we can continue to do that. We haven't started out quarters well, we want to find energy early in games so we don't have to play from behind and it was nice to see that tonight."

News and Notes
> The Sea Lions would hold the Golden Eagles scoreless for the first five minutes of the first quarter.
> The Golden Eagles out-rebounded the Sea Lions 48-44
> PLNU forced 16 turnovers resulting in 21 points. 
> Point Loma held Cal State LA to 13 or fewer points in three of the four quarters. 
> The Sea Lions scored 38 of their 73 points in the paint. 
 
Up Next
The Sea Lions will play at home once again tomorrow as part of the Thanksgiving Classic. The women will host Cal State Dominguez Hills at 5 p.m.