SAN FRANCISCO – It's win or go home now for the Cougars.
With an 81-52 win against Academy of Art, Azusa Pacific closed the regular season as they set their sights on the PacWest tournament next week.
The Cougars will be the No. 5 seed for the postseason event which begins Thursday at Concordia University in Irvine, Calif. Azusa Pacific (15-13, 13-7 PacWest) will play fourth seeded Notre Dame de Namur for the second time in a week at 5 p.m.
"We are excited about this opportunity. This team hasn't completely hit their stride yet but we have an opportunity to extend our season and I'm excited to see how we come out next week." head coach T.J. Hardeman said. "We played solid defense today and I'm pleased with the energy we played with today."
In Saturday's win Abigail Goodsell scored a team high 23 points on the strength of a 5-for-10 shooting performance from behind the arc. Gabrielle Kaiser chipped-in her fourth double-double of the season with a 16-point, 14-rebuond afternoon.
Not to go unnoticed was the solid play of Casey Wortley who scored 12 points and grabbed eight rebounds in 22 minutes.
Trailing 13-10 with just over four minutes left in the first quarter, Azusa Pacific finished the frame by scoring 15 of the last 20 points to take seven-point edge (25-18) into the second stanza. The Cougars continued to build their lead during the early moments of the second quarter. Azusa Pacific went ahead by 15 points on two occasions before taking a 43-33 lead at intermission.
Although the Urban Knights threatened to take the lead early in the third quarter, Azusa Pacific would never trail the rest of the game. The home team got as close as 47-43 which forced a Cougar timeout. However, Azusa Pacific responded resoundedly by finishing the period on an 18-2 scoring spurt to put the game out of reach.
Azusa Pacific held the Urban Knights (16-12, 12-8) to just seven points in the final quarter to wrap-up the victory. During the final 20 minutes, Academy of Art was held to a 26.5 percent (9-for-34) shooting effort while making just one of their 11 three-point attempts.
