Mustangs Host Defending National Champions in No. 1 South Carolina Tuesday

Tuesday, November 22

San Luis Obispo, Calif.

5 P.M.

South Carolina

Cal Poly Womenâ??s Basketball hosted Simpson 11/10/22 Photo by Owen Main

Photo by: Owen Main | Cal Poly Athletics

Mustangs Host Defending National Champions in No. 1 South Carolina Tuesday

11/20/2022 6:31:00 PM | Women's Basketball

WEEKLY NOTES (PDF)

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — Beginning a stretch of four straight home games, the Cal Poly women's basketball team will continue its tough non-conference schedule Tuesday when hosting the defending national champions in No. 1 South Carolina to Mott Athletics Center. Tip time against the No. 1 Gamecocks is set for 5 p.m. for the historic matchup. It will be a white out with all fans encouraged to wear white to the game. It's the first time in its Division I history Cal Poly will host both a defending national champion and No. 1 ranked team at Mott Athletics Center. Tuesday's game continues one of the toughest non-conference slates in the country to this point as the Mustangs (2-2) have already played UCLA, No. 2 Stanford, and Fresno St this season. Last week, the Mustangs fell to No. 1 Stanford 80-43 before beating Fresno State on the road 48-47 via a game-winning reverse layup by sophomore guard Annika Shah. In that game, Shah finished with a career-high 13 points. Tuesday's game against the No. 1 Gamecocks (4-0) will be the first meeting with them in program history. After winning the national championship last season, South Carolina is off to a 4-0 start this year. Sunday, they went to Palo Alto and beat No. 2 Stanford in overtime, 76-71. Led by legendary head coach Dawn Staley, South Carolina returns four starters from last year, led by National Player of the Year winner Aliyah Boston, and 10 total letterwinners. They were ranked No. 1 in the Preseason AP Poll and were picked to win the SEC in both the Preseason Coaches and Media Polls. Following Tuesday's game, Cal Poly hosts its annual post-Thanksgiving tournament. The Mustangs will play Sacramento State Friday at noon followed by San Jose State Saturday at 2:30. There will be two neutral games each of those days, with UTEP and San Jose State playing Friday at 2:30 and UTEP playing Sacramento State Saturday at noon. Returning Mustangs: Despite losing two starters from last year, Cal Poly brings back plenty from last year's team. Two of the team's top three scorers are back this year. Senior guard Maddie Willett returns after being second on the team in scoring last year at 8.9 ppg while leading the team in made threes and three point percentage. Senior forward Julia Nielacna is also back after averaging 8.3 ppg last season while playing in 24 of 25 games and starting 11. In addition to those two, there are five players back this season who played in at least 22 games last year. New Stangs: Cal Poly added seven newcomers to this year's team, four freshmen and three Division I transfers. The three transfers consist of graduate student Nikola Kovacikova, graduate student Oumou Toure, and junior Taylor Wu. Kovacikova comes to Cal Poly after previously playing at both Penn and Georgetown. Last season at Penn, she played in 19 games with eight starts. Off the court, she earned Penn's Norman J. Goldring Prize and George H. Frazier Prize which is given to a senior female student-athlete with the highest GPA. She spent her first two collegiate seasons at Georgetown. As a sophomore in 2019-20, she appeared in 27 games with 12 starts and was the Hoyas' third-leading scorer, averaging 7.9 ppg. Toure comes to Cal Poly after having spent the last three years at Butler. She played her freshman season before missing the next two due to injury and the COVID pandemic. As a freshman in 2019-20, she was named to the Big East All-Freshman Team. That season, she appeared in 27 games, making 20 starts and ranked second on the team in scoring at 9.1 points per game while shooting 46 percent from the field to go along with 6.1 rebounds per game. She also led the Big East and ranked 45th in the NCAA in steals per game at 2.33. Wu spent the last three seasons at California Baptist University where she played in 70 career games. She made her mark as a freshman in 2019-20, averaging 6.6 ppg, 1.7 rpg, 1.7 apg in 18.4 minutes per game. She broke the program's freshman single game scoring record after dropping 37 points against Ottawa (AZ) and in the same game broke the program record for threes made in a game with 10. As a sophomore, she started 19 of 27 games, averaging 8.9 ppg, 1.7 apg, and 21.9 minutes per game. She scored in double figures 11 times including a season-high 15 against Pepperdine.