Mustangs Return to Action This Week Hosting UC San Diego, UC Irvine

Thursday, January 27

San Luis Obispo, Calif.

7 P.M.

UC San Diego

Tickets

Mustangs Return to Action This Week Hosting UC San Diego, UC Irvine

1/25/2022 4:57:00 PM | Women's Basketball

WEEKLY NOTES (PDF)

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — After having its last four games canceled due to COVID protocols, the Cal Poly women's basketball team returns to action this week for the first time in 19 days to host a pair of Big West games at Mott Athletics Center.

The Mustangs (1-11, 0-3 BWC) will be seeking their first Big West win of the season when they face UC San Diego Thursday at 7 p.m. followed by UC Irvine Saturday at 2 p.m. Daniel Gillman and Zachary Anderson-Yoxsimer will have the call for both games on ESPN+ as well as GoPoly.com. Links to those as well as live stats can be found on the schedule page.

Cal Poly has not played a game since Jan. 8 when it hosted CSUN, falling to the Matadors 54-45. COVID protocols canceled Cal Poly's subsequent games against UC Riverside, UC Davis, CSU Bakersfield, and Hawai'i. So far during the conference season, Cal Poly has lost all three of its games to Long Beach State, UCSB, and the aforementioned Matadors.

Junior guard Maddie Vick leads the scoring charge for the Mustangs this season, averaging 10.5 points per game in addition to 3.8 rebounds per game and 3.6 assists per game. She has had six games of scoring in double figures, the most on the team. In Cal Poly's last game against CSUN, Vick scored a team-high 15 points. Between Nov. 26 and Dec. 13, Vick had a stretch in which she scored double figures in five straight games, including a career-high 19 twice.

Another Mustang who has been playing strong basketball has been junior forward Julia Nielacna. Through the Mustangs' first three games of conference play, Nielacna is averaging 12.3 points per game and is shooting 50 percent from the field. The San Francisco transfer has scored double figures in four of the last five games. Overall for the season she is averaging 8.2 points and 4.4 rebounds per game.

This will be just the fourth all-time matchup against the UC San Diego. The Tritons (7-8, 4-2), in their second year as a Division I program, hosted Cal Poly for a pair of games in La Jolla last season with the two teams splitting the series. Prior to last season, there had only been one prior matchup in 1983 with the Mustangs winning 69-57.

UC San Diego comes into Thursday's game tied for third in the Big West with a 4-2 conference record. They are most recently coming off a 64-61 victory over Cal State Fullerton last Saturday. The Tritons are led in scoring by forward Sydney Brown's 12.5 points per game which ranks eighth in the Big West. She's also averaging 8.2 rebounds per game, good for third in the conference. As a team, UC San Diego leads the conference in threes made per game with 7.9 and second in three-point percentage at 32.8 percent. The leading part of that has been guard Madison Baxter's conference-leading 53 percent from beyond the arc. In addition, they lead the conference in blocks per game (4.9), field goal percentage defense (34.3), and defensive rebounds per game (29.7).

UC Irvine comes into the week tied with UC San Diego for third in the Big West standings at 4-2. The Anteaters (9-8, 4-2 BWC), who made it to the Big West Tournament Championship game last season, are coming off a 62-50 loss to Long Beach State last Saturday and have lost two of their last three games. They are led by guard Kayla Williams' 14.2 points per game which ranks fourth in the Big West. Williams also ranks fourth in the conference in assists at 4.13 per game. As a team, UC Irvine leads the conference in scoring at 68.9 points per game as well as offensive rebounds per game at 13.7. Last season, UC Irvine won all three times the two teams faced off, including in the semifinals of the Big West Tournament.

Brown Nearing Program Record: Kirsty Brown, a fifth-year player, needs to play in just 11 more games to become the Mustangs' program leader in career games played. The record is 124 and she currently sits at 114.

Returning Mustangs: The Mustangs return a total of eight players from last season. Those include junior guard Maddie Willett who started 23 of 24 games last year and was third on the team in scoring at 7.8 points per game and had seven games in which she scored double figures.

Graduate forward Kirsty Brown returns for her fifth season. Last year, she was fourth on the team in scoring 6.4 points per game, second in rebounding at 5.6 per game, and had three double-doubles.

Junior guard Maddie Vick played in all 24 games last season and came off the bench to lead the team in assists per game at 2.8. She also ranked third in the Big West in assist-to-turnover ratio at 2.6.

New Stangs: Cal Poly will have plenty of youth on this year's team as they welcome six freshmen. The Mustangs also added two Division I transfers in redshirt freshman guard Sarah Dumitrescu from Ole Miss and junior forward Julia Nielacna from San Francisco.

At USF, Nielacna was second on the team in scoring as a freshman in 2019-20. Last year, she averaged 8.0 points per game while shooting 44-percent from the field and 35-percent from three.

As a freshman last season at Ole Miss, Dumitrescu averaged 4.5 points and 7.3 rebounds per game in six games before missing the rest of the season due to injury.