DAVIS, Calif. – The UC Santa Barbara women’s basketball team fell to the UC Davis Aggies in their final regular season Big West Conference game, 80-44 at The Pavilion on Saturday afternoon.
The Gauchos (8-21, 5-11 Big West) shot just 23.2% from the field and 19% from beyond the arc against the first-place Aggies (23-6, 15-1 Big West).
The Aggies got off to a hot start from the open, starting the game out on a 12-0 run with a trio of layups and a pair of triples.
The Gauchos would score all 7 of their first-quarter points in the span of a minute and a half to cut the Davis lead to 9, but the Aggies would continue finding success from their perimeter shooting after a Karley Eaton three-pointer put the Big West regular season champions up 22-7 at the end of the first quarter.
UC Davis continued to pile on the points in the second quarter, hitting three more treys while finding shots inside to go up 43-18 at the halftime interval.
Although the Gauchos succumbed to Davis’ barrage of threes, UCSB allowed just 24 points in the paint compared to the 44 they allowed in their first matchup versus the Aggies.
In addition, the UCSB defense held Morgan Bertsch to her third-lowest point total of the year, in which she scored 16 points on just 3-of-11 shooting.
The Gauchos continued their takeaway streak, now with six or more steals in each of the last six games. This was also the third time in the last six games that UCSB recorded that many steals and committed single digit turnovers.
Taj Sahar finished with 11 points and six rebounds, while Danae Miller added nine points and six rebounds.
Elsewhere, Hawai’i’s victory over CSUN and UC Irvine’s defeat of Long Beach State means the Gauchos fall to the eighth seed in next week’s Big West Conference Tournament. They will open the tournament against the fifth-seeded UC Irvine Anteaters on Tuesday at 6 p.m. from the Bren Events Center in Irvine.
The game will be streamed live on ESPN3 and an audio-only stream will be available on UCSBGauchos.com