Overview:
Olivia Bradley scores team-high 17 points while Zoe Borter (15) and Maddie Naro (14) earn selection to the CBU Classic All-Tournament Team
RIVERSIDE — Olivia Bradley was game for another crack at UC Santa Barbara’s endgame play when the clock reached the final second of Saturday’s final of the CBU Classic Women’s Basketball Tournament.
The sophomore forward beat the buzzer with a layup on a sideline inbounds play that she’d botched in practice, giving the Gauchos a dramatic 66-64 victory over Tennessee Chattanooga.
“We’ve run it a few times in practice, and the other day Liv kind of bobbled it,” UCSB coach Renee Jimenez said. “She was like, ‘Don’t worry! I’ll get it!’
“We run it for a lob, but with one second left, we told her, ‘Liv, you don’t even have to tip it … All you have to do is catch it and score.’”
She did just that after making a back-cut off Jessica Grant’s screen, catching Maddie Naro’s 35-foot, inbounds pass from the left sideline, and scoring just before the horn sounded at Cal Baptist University’s Fowler Events Center.
“Maddie had like a 6-4 kid on her, but Jess is a great decoy,” Jimenez said of the play she diagrammed during a timeout with 0:01.0 showing on the scoreboard clock. “They’re like, ‘(Grant’s) the best shooter in the Big West … I’m not going to leave her.’
“And so she just nailed her on the back-pick and it worked perfectly.
“It doesn’t always happen that way, but we’ve been working on that for a few weeks now. It was fun for them to watch it all come to fruition.”
Bradley finished with a team-high 17 points for UCSB (6-1), which will take a five-game winning streak into Thursday’s 6 p.m., Big West Conference opener at Long Beach State.
Chattanooga (4-5) had won its previous two games in the final seconds.
“That’s been the story of our season,” Mocs coach Deandra Schirmer said of the “nail-biter” game.
The Gauchos overcame a 40-29 disadvantage in rebounds by holding Chattanooga, the coaches’ pick to win the Southern Conference, to just 38.1% shooting. Zoe Shaw led UCSB’s defense with four steals while also scoring nine points.
“It was such a great win against a really good team, and so was the one against 5-0 Cal Baptist the day before,” Jimenez said. “Chattanooga is really big, they’re strong, and they tried to pound the ball inside on us.
“It’s nice to go into Big West with some sort of identity at this point, with such a new team and so many new players playing a big role.”
Naro, who became one of Jimenez’s “new players” by transferring from Santa Clara, scored eight of her 14 points in the final five minutes. Two of her four three-pointers came during that stretch, the first of which erased a 53-52 deficit.
She worked the shot clock down before scoring her last two baskets: a runner with 1:36 to go and a three with 50.8 seconds left which boosted UCSB’s lead to 64-59.
“She got the layup, she got the dagger three … and then the biggest assist of her life from the sideline on that last one,” Jimenez said. “She’s just clutch … Just clutch.”
Gianna Corbitt gave Chattanooga a chance at its third last-second win in a row by making a three with 38 seconds left and a game-tying bank shot with one second to go.
She and Caia Elisaldez, the Southern Conference’s preseason Player of the Year, each scored 18 points for the Mocs.
But UCSB still had a timeout left, giving it the ball along the sideline on its end of the court … and Jimenez the opportunity to call her well-practiced endgame play.
“I thought our group did a really good job of staying possession-focused in this game,” she said.
“They were really able to stifle our offense a little bit,” she added. “They matched up well on switches and made it hard.
“But we were never too high, never too low, never rattled.”
Naro and Zoe Borter were both voted to the all-tournament team.
Borter led the Gauchos to a 41-40 halftime lead by scoring all 15 of her points. She made 4-of-6 shots and 6-of-6 free throws in the first two quarters but took only two more shots, missing both.
Others stepped up, however. Bradley scored eight points after the break while guard Skylar Burke, UCSB’s leader in rebounds with seven, added seven points in the second half.
“We’ve talked a lot about every person staying ready when their name is called and being really engaged,” Jimenez said.
Bradley was ready to answer that call.