Mustangs Set to Host Annual Holiday Beach Classic This Weekend

Friday, November 25

San Luis Obispo, Calif.

12 P.M.

Sacramento State

Photo by: Owen Main | Cal Poly Athletics

Mustangs Set to Host Annual Holiday Beach Classic This Weekend

11/23/2022 5:02:00 PM | Women's Basketball

WEEKLY NOTES (PDF)

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — After hosting the No. 1 team in the country in South Carolina at Mott Athletics Center Tuesday to kick off a four-game homestand, Cal Poly women's basketball will now prepare to host its annual Holiday Beach Classic tournament this weekend. The Mustangs (2-3) will face Sacramento State (3-1) Friday at noon before taking on San Jose State (1-3) Saturday at 2:30 p.m. In addition, each day there will be non-Cal Poly game. Friday, UTEP will take on San Jose State at 2:30 p.m. Saturday, UTEP will face Sacramento State at noon. Through the first five games of the season, Cal Poly has played the ninth-hardest schedule in the country. The Mustangs have already played a now-ranked UCLA team, No. 2 Stanford, and No. 1 South Carolina. The Mustangs also played Simpson University and Fresno State, collecting wins in both. Through the first five games, senior forward Julia Nielacna, who sat out Tuesday's game against South Carolina, leads Cal Poly in scoring at 9.0 points per game.Sophomore guard Annika Shah, who hit the game-winning shot against Fresno State, is second in scoring at 7.8 points per game while leading the team is assists at 3.2 per game. Shah also leads the Big West in assist-to-turnover ratio at 2.28. Junior forward Natalia Ackerman leads the team in rebounds at 5.2 per game. Against the top-ranked Gamecocks, the defending national champions, Shah led the Mustangs with eight points to go along with two rebounds and two assists. Tuesday's game against South Carolina also saw the second-biggest crowd in Mott Athletics Center history for a women's basketball with 2,384 fans in attendance. Cal Poly will looking to go 2-0 this weekend at the Holiday Beach Classic for the first time since the 2016-17 season. Last year, they went 1-1 at it, beating St. Thomas before falling to Montana State. Following Saturday's game, the Mustangs will be off until December 10 when they welcome NAU into Mott Athletics Center. Scouting Sacramento State: The Hornets enter Friday's game having won three in a row after dropping their first game of the season. All of their wins have been against Big West opponents, with the most recent a 67-45 win over UC Davis. They have two players averaging over 15 points per game, led by Kahlaijah Dean's 20 per game. Scouting San Jose State: The Spartans are off to a 1-3 start this season. Their losses have been to Tulsa, Cal State Fullerton, and Montana State with their lone win coming against CSUN. Last year, they finished 5-25 overall. A balanced scoring team, they have five players averaging over six points per game. Cal Poly has won the last two meetings over San Jose State, with the last in the 2011-12 season. 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.