SAN DIEGO – After a barrage of offense to open the home slate, the San Diego State women’s basketball team made like a boa constrictor on defense in a 78-48 win over the Cal State Bakersfield Roadrunners on Saturday, Nov. 15 at Viejas Arena.
Nala Williams notched a double-double with a game-high 25 points and 10 rebounds, both DI career-highs, Naomi Panganiban scored 13 points on 5-of-7 shooting and Nat Martinez scored 8 points with a game high five assists.
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“My question mark for this team was, ‘can we find ways to win when we’re not shooting at a high level, can we find ways to win when things aren’t going our way?'” said head coach Stacie Terry-Hutson. “There was some adversity, there were some emotions that were on our bench today, and I was happy to see that they were able to figure it out, and play through that and still be successful.”
The answer for Scarlet and Black today was a defense squeezed the life out of the Roadrunners by not allowing a field goal for a stretch of 19:49 across the second, third and fourth quarters. SDSU forced 20 straight misses, with Bakersfield managing only 6 points on 10 free throw attempts during the spell.
“We locked in, we talked to each other as a team and that was a big thing we talked about at halftime of adjusting to the defensive end, because we’re a much better team than we showed in the first half and we showed it in the second half,” Williams said.
Subtracting the eight field goal makes from the first quarter, SDSU allowed six the rest of the way as the 14 field goals allowed matched the fifth-fewest that the Aztecs have allowed against a DI opponent under Terry-Hutson. Most recently, SDSU had held Florida Atlantic to that many makes on Dec. 21, 2023, at the West Palm Beach Classic.
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The defensive lockdown began by holding Bakersfield scoreless for the final 6:37 and causing misses on the visitors’ final nine shots. The Aztecs scored the final 14 points of the half, punctuated by Williams scoring her 14th of the quarter by nailing a buzzer-beating 3 from the left wing to make it 48-32.
Williams made like a microwave to start the second quarter, scoring the first nine points for the Scarlet and Black. The opened the account by hitting a 3-ball, converted an and-one after battling for a pair of offensive boards, then splashed another long ball.
“It’s just wanting it more, some people might be taller, some people might be stronger, some people might be faster, but at the end of the day whoever wants it more usually gets the ball,” said Williams, who had previously recorded six double-doubles in three seasons at Cal State Dominguez Hills.
Offense was less plentiful for the Aztecs in the second half, as they scored 15 points in each quarter. In addition to Williams, Panganiban, Bailey Barnhard (6 points) and CJ Latta (5 points) each had multiple field goals over the final 20 minutes.
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The opening ten minutes was up-and-down, as well as chippy with both teams getting to the bonus around the four-minute mark. Martinez was decisive on the drive, scoring a pair of baskets on slices through the paint and then knocking down all four free-throws.
It was needed, as Panganiban picked up two fouls in just under the first three minutes, but would be the only scoring from Martinez for the game. Despite an off shooting night by her standards, Martinez shifted into a distributing role the rest of the way.
“She didn’t get frustrated when her shot wasn’t falling, because she was doing other things that help win,” Terry-Hutson said. “That adversity of ‘my shot’s not falling, what’s the next thing that I can do, how do I get out of myself and not worry about me and focus more on the we,’ there was a lot of that today.”
The Aztecs made just 1 of 8 from downtown in the quarter as the Roadrunners knocked down a trio of triples. Bakersfield guard Chrishawn Coleman made two from beyond as part of her 12 in the quarter—she also finished with 25 points—as the visitors had a 24-23 edge after one.
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SDSU closes out their four-game home stand by facing Santa Clara at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 19. It will be the first field trip day game of the season, facing a Broncos (3-1) side that was picked to finish fifth in the West Coast Conference.
“We’re going to have to dig deep, and it’s going to be a grind it out type of game — they’re a good team with a good post player and good guards,” Terry-Hutson said. “We’re going to make sure we have better prep days next week than we did this week.”
This story was updated at 4:54 p.m.
