Nov. 26, 2010

Final Stats | Postgame Comments

DAVIS, Calif. - UC Davis opened the second half against Yale with a 20-4 run, taking a 23-point lead, as the Aggies went on to post a 73-62 nonconference women's basketball victory over the Bulldogs on Friday evening at The Pavilion.

UC Davis, ranked 16th in the CollegeInsider.com Mid-Major poll this week, improved to 4-1 while beating Yale for the second straight season. Paige Mintun scored a game-high 20 points for the Aggies while Kasey Riecks added 11 points and six rebounds.

Yale, which fell to 1-4, was paced by 14 points from both Megan Vazquez and Erick von Kaeppler. Forward Michelle Cashen added 12.

The Aggies led just 34-27 at halftime but made five of their first seven shots to start the second half, scoring 12 of the first 14 points and taking a 46-29 lead with 15 minutes, 53 seconds left. Mintun started the run with a pair of layups while Juric had the last three buckets, also on layups.

A three-pointer from Yoyo Greenfield brought the Bulldogs to within 15 points but back-to-back pointers from Vicky Deely and Mintun and a pair of free throws from Heidi Heintz gave UC Davis its biggest lead of the game, 54-31 with 13:28 to go, capping a 20-4 run over the first six-and-half minutes of the half. Yale didn't get closer than 13 points until scoring the game's final three points to provide the final margin.

UC Davis shot 54.5% from the field in the second half and outrebounded the Bulldogs 18-16. Vicky Deely, the Big West Player of the Week, came off the bench to lead the Aggies on the boards for the fifth straight game, grabbing eight - all of them in the second half.

"I felt Yale completely controlled the tempo of the game for the last eight or nine minutes of the (first) half and we needed to get back to being the aggressors," said head coach Sandy Simpson. "I felt we did that and it gave us the cushion we needed."

The Aggies and Bulldogs were tied twice in the early going before Yale took its biggest lead of the half at 12-8 after a three-pointer from von Kaeppler with 13 minutes, 36 seconds left in the half. However, sparked by three points from Mintun and layups from Blair Shinoda, Hannah Stephens and Lauren Juric, UC Davis scored the next nine points for a 17-12 advantage at the midway point of the half.

The Aggies led by five and eight points later in the half but each time the Bulldogs climbed back to within three points, the latter opportunity coming with 3:52 to go when Allie Messimer connected on a three-pointer. UC Davis answered with its own surge, capping a 7-1 run with Rieck's trey with 1:37 remaining to make it 31-22. Vazquez's three-pointer of her own brought Yale to within 32-27 in the waning seconds before Mintun's jumper just prior to the buzzer gave the Aggies a 34-27 halftime lead.

UC Davis shot 46.4% from the field in the first half but was just 1 of 8 from beyond the arc while Yale made a quartet of three-pointers but converted just 35.7% of their shots overall. Every Aggie that got in the game over the first 20 minutes scored led by eight points from Riecks and seven from Mintun. Riecks also had six of the team's 16 boards.

The Aggies also did a better job protecting the ball in the first half after turning it over 19 times in the first half during last Sunday's loss at then No. 15 UCLA. They had just eight miscues against Yale before the break and had seven steals.

Heintz and Juric each finished with three steals for UC Davis while Asano and Heintz each had four assists. Asano added nine points while Deely and Juric finished with eight each. The Aggies shot 50% from the field for the game.

UC Davis, which has won both of its games at home so far, will return to Hamilton Court on Sunday when it hosts South Carolina at 2 p.m. The matchup is the first-ever between the Aggies and the Lady Gamecocks.