STOCKTON, Calif. – A career day from Lindsey VanAllen helped lead Santa Clara women's basketball to a 77-74 win at Pacific Saturday afternoon.
VanAllen scored a career high 25 points and was 16-of-18 from the free throw line while also grabbing eight rebounds. The 16 free throws made are the second most in a game in program history and the 18 attempts are tied for the second most. Meagan Fulps picked up both records when she went 17-of-20 from the charity stripe vs. CSU Bakersfield on Nov. 11, 2011.
"It was great to see Lindsey being aggressive," Santa Clara head coach Bill Carr said. "I thought everyone kind of fed off of her today."
The game featured 65 total free throws with the Broncos (7-4, 3-2 WCC) going 22-for-30 while the Tigers (4-2, 2-2 WCC) were 26-of-35. Santa Clara held a slight advantage from the floor, shooting 41.8-percent with Pacific shooting 35.0-percent.
"This was another good team win," Santa Clara head coach Bill Carr said. "Lindsey had a really good game and other people scored the ball as well, but we got contributions from everybody. Everyone made little plays that ultimately helped us to the win."
Santa Clara was up by as many as 11 midway through the fourth quarter after Ashlee Maldonado connected on a layup, but Pacific answered with a 12-3 run that featured a pair of 3-pointers from Lianna Tillman and cut the Bronco lead down to 70-68 with 2:48 left in the game.
Maldonado's layup at the 6:23 mark proved to be the final field goal of the day for Santa Clara, but the Broncos never broke and converted 10 free throws during the dry stretch to keep the Tigers at bay.
"They're a really good team and we know that good teams are going to make a run," Carr said. "The message was to string a couple stops together and keep being aggressive on offense. They didn't quit, not did we expect them to. We learned a good lesson today. I expect we'll be in a position like this again so it was good to see us hold the lead and keep our poise."
The Broncos built their lead behind a 13-0 run in the third quarter. Merle Wiehl started things with back-to-back triples and Maldonado's jumper at the 5:01 mark made it a 54-37 lead.
Maldonado tied her career high with 11 points and Ashlyn Herlihy scored 10 to put her at 998 in her Santa Clara career. Wiehl just missed a double-double with nine points and a career high 11 boards while Danja Stafford set career bests with nine points and six rebounds.
The Tigers would follow that up with a 15-3 run that spanned the end of the third quarter and start of the fourth to get back within 61-54 with 7:31 on the clock after a pair of free throws from Valerie Higgins.
Higgins led Pacific with 17 points and was 9-of-10 from the charity stripe to go with nine rebounds and six steals. Brooklyn McDavid and Rosie Schweizer both scored 12 with Cassidy Johnson adding 11 points.
Santa Clara started the game on a 15-4 run, featuring seven points from VanAllen, and would get up by as many as 14 in the first half.
Pacific had a 10-0 run of its own in the second quarter behind a lair of layups by Cassidy Johnson and back-to-back 3-pointers from Schweizer to get back into it, but never held a lead.
NOTES
- Santa Clara is now 31-25 all-time against Pacific.
- The Broncos won both games in their Saint Mary's/Pacific road trip for the first time since the 2015-16 season, the year they went to the WNIT.
- Santa Clara won the battle of the boards 40-32.
- The Broncos outscored the Tigers 19-2 on the fastbreak.
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