Melissa Rodriguez
Staff Writer
The University of La Verne women’s basketball team captured its first win Monday, defeating La Sierra 79-58.
“I give credit to the girls effort at practice everyday, we’re excited,” head coach Julie Kline said. “We are committed and taking it one game at a time.”
The Leopards came together as a team and sent La Sierra home the same way they came, winless.
La Sierra now has a 0-6 record while La Verne improved to a 1-3 record.
La Verne made 41 percent of their field goals compared to La Sierra who made 38 percent.
The free throw line proved to be the difference for the Leopards.
La Verne made 17 out of 23 of their free throw attempts, whereas LSU made only nine out of 25 free throws.
The Leopards were behind the entire first half and went to the locker room trailing, 29-26.
They came back the second half motivated and ready to take charge in the game.
With the audience into the game cheering on the Leopards, they began to shoot and score.
“We had to get everything together and build from it,” junior forward/guard Nicole Gerber said.
Junior guard Stephanie Foster and sophomore forward Janie Cozine led the Leopards to victory with 20 points each.
Senior guard Sally Marroquin shot 100 percent from the free throw line.
Cozine had a team high of 10 rebounds and Gerber followed with five.
“We came out fired up,” Gerber said. “It was intense but we came through and won.”
The Leopards shot a fair 74 percent from the free throw line for the game and outscored La Sierra, 53-29, in the second half to ensure the victory.
This 2004-2005 team is a fairly new team. There are only three returning players resulting in 11 new women.
This first victory is an important step to further progress building the team’s unity and hopefully they can continue to build on this momentum.
“We have improved steadily,” Kline said. “We need to improve on everything and emphasize on defense.”
The Leopards face Hope International University in a non-conference match up next Wednesday in the Supertents.
Like the Leopards, Hope International holds a 1-3 overall season record.
Melissa Rodriguez can be reached at mrodriguez2@ulv.edu.
Journalism operations manager at the University of La Verne. Production manager and business manager of the Campus Times.
