SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The Santa Clara University women's basketball team travels to the Pacific Northwest this week for its first West Coast Conference road trip of the season. The first trip is a tough one, as the Broncos will face the top-two teams in the standings, taking on Portland Thursday and clashing with No. 20/20 Gonzaga on Saturday.

THE MATCHUPS

Santa Clara (10-6, 1-2 WCC) at Portland (10-5, 4-0 WCC)
Santa Clara (10-6, 1-2 WCC) at #20/20 Gonzaga (14-2, 4-0 WCC) 

GAME INFO

When: Thursday, Jan. 5 • 6 p.m.
Where: Portland, Ore. (Chiles Center)
Video: WCC Network
Live Stats: StatBroadcast
Game Notes: Santa Clara | Portland

When: Saturday, Jan. 7 • 2 p.m.
Where: Spokane, Wash. (McCarthey Athletic Center)
Video: WCC Network
Live Stats: StatBroadcast
Game Notes: Santa Clara | #20/20 Gonzaga

SERIES HISTORY
Santa Clara is 49-33 all-time against Portland, including 19-13 in Portland. The last meeting was a 76-66 Santa Clara win in Santa Clara, Calif., on Feb. 19, 2022

Santa Clara is 29-47 all-time against Gonzaga, including 8-24 in Spokane, Wash. The last meeting was a 74-58 Gonzaga win in Spokane, Wash., on Feb. 21, 2022.

NOTES

• The Broncos suffered their second shocking defeat in three WCC games Saturday. San Francisco hit a game-tying shot with 0.7 seconds left to send the game into overtime, then barely hung on with late free throws to beat Santa Clara, 80-79, at Leavey Center.
  
  Santa Clara was still ahead by one with less than 90 seconds to play in overtime. But San Francisco (12-3, 2-1 WCC) went 5 for 6 from the free-throw line in the game's final 30 seconds to overtake the Broncos and hold on for the win. Meanwhile, the Broncos shot just 1 for 6 from the floor during the extra period before Ashley Hiraki's 3-pointer at the buzzer made it a one-point final score.
• Two of the conference's best international players will clash Thursday - and they happen to be fellow countrywomen. Santa Clara's Tess Heal (Melbourne, Victoria) and Portland's Alex Fowler (Townsville, Queensland) both hail from Australia and are both two of the conference's top players. Fowler (2nd, 17.5 points per game) and Heal (4th, 16.3 ppg) rank among the conference's top-four scorers. They're both top-10 in field goal percentage, free-throw shooting, and assists, and top-15 in total rebounds.
• So far this season, as long as Santa Clara keeps its opponent under 70 points, it wins. The Broncos are 9-0 in 2022-23 when allowing 69 or less points. And they've outscored their opponents by an average of 26.4 points in those nine wins.
• Santa Clara entered this season having gone 1-12 in its last 13 non-conference games played outside of California (not including the WCC Tournament), dating to Dec. 18, 2014. But they went 3-0 in 2022-23, going unbeaten at the Las Vegas Holiday Classic with wins over South Dakota (75-50) and Washington (71-58), then beating Nevada on Dec. 11, 66-56.
• Another strong string of performances before Christmas brought more accolades for Santa Clara freshman guard Tess Heal, as she was named both the U.S. Basketball Writers Association Tamika Catchings National Freshman of the Week, and earned her fifth WCC Freshman of the Week award for the week of Dec. 12-19. She has won all but two WCC awards so far this year.
  
  Heal averaged 17.3 points, 4.7 assists, and 3.7 rebounds in three games from Dec. 12-19 (the USBWA award was based on Heal's two games from Dec. 12-18) while shooting 55.6% to help lead Santa Clara to a 2-1 week and a 1-1 start in WCC play. Heal was the Broncos' leading scorer in all three games during the week and was the game-high scorer twice.
• Santa Clara head coach Bill Carr is nine wins away from his 300th career victory and 11 wins from his 100th as the head coach of the Santa Clara women's program. Carr spent 11 years from 1999-2016 as the head coach of three different NAIA and NCAA Division II men's basketball programs, amassing 202 wins along the way. He's won 89 games at Santa Clara, surpassing his highest total at any of his men's coaching stops (84 at Spring Hill College, 1999-2002).
  
  Carr, the eighth head coach in program history, is the fourth-winningest head coach of all-time for Broncos women's basketball. He trails No. 3 Ken Thompson, who coached SCU from 1978-88 and collected 112 victories.

• The Broncos made waves on Nov. 30 even in defeat with a spectacular effort against the No. 2 team in the country, as they drove up El Camino Real to revive a series versus 2021 national champion Stanford that hadn't been played for seven years. The Cardinal won, 82-69, but Santa Clara scored the second-most points allowed by the Cardinal this season, hit the most 3-pointers Stanford has allowed (13) and held the No. 2 team in the country to its worst 3-point shooting percentage (27.3%) of the year. The 13-point margin of victory was Stanford's smallest in nine wins, more than 10 points smaller than the next smallest victory margin (24).
• Santa Clara posted its second consecutive winning season in 2021-22 – the first time the Broncos had logged consecutive winning campaigns in 16 years. The Broncos have won at least 12 games in five of head coach Bill Carr's six years at the helm. They'll be looking to log their third straight winning season in 2022-23 for the first time in 20 years – since the program wrapped up a run of 13 straight winning years in 2002-03.
  
  The Broncos' regular season success has also shown through in the postseason the last two years. Santa Clara reached the WCC Tournament quarterfinals in 2022 with back-to-back wins in the first and second rounds. That came a year after they reached the semifinals in 2021.

• Journeyperson Ayzhiana Basallo enters Thursday's game only three points away from 1,000 for her career. She has six double-digit scoring games already and is the team's second-leading scorer in her first year with the Broncos. The San Francisco native has played at four different colleges during her six-year career, including Cal Poly (2017-18), San Jose State (2019-21), Arizona State (2021-22) and Santa Clara (Present).
  
  Her biggest season came in 2019-20 as a sophomore at SJSU. She was named the Mountain West Newcomer of the Year and made the Mountain West all-conference team after scoring an impressive 536 points in 29 games. Basallo is a 40.8% career shooter from 3-point range and a 90.2% career free-throw shooter.

• Santa Clara defeated Washington, 71-58, on Nov. 26 to conclude the Las Vegas Holiday Classic with a perfect 2-0 record. It was the Broncos' first win over the Huskies in 21 years almost to the day and by almost the exact same score. The Broncos last beat UW on Nov. 24, 2001, in Seattle, 71-56. It was Santa Clara's first win over a Pac-12 Conference member since Nov. 23, 2015, when it beat Stanford on the road, 61-58.
  
  The Broncos also beat 2022 Sweet 16 team South Dakota on the trip. Their unblemished trip to Las Vegas marked the first time they went unbeaten in a non-conference tournament in seven years. They last went 2-0 at Cal Poly's 2015 ShareSLO Holiday Tournament in San Luis Obispo on Nov. 27-28, 2015.

• Santa Clara's 2022-23 roster features eight players who haven't played for the Broncos in at least a year – that includes six newcomers who have never donned an SCU jersey, and returners Ashlee Maldonado and Lexie Pritchard, who are both returning from season-long injuries. Santa Clara's six newcomers include three freshmen and three transfers. The trio of transfers feature redshirt senior guard Azhiana Basallo, a San Francisco native who comes to the South Bay from Arizona State via San Jose State and Cal Poly, sophomore forward Olivia Pollerd from Washington of the Pac-12 Conference, and junior guard Jayde Cadee out of UC Irvine. The rookies include 6-foot, 3-inch forward Georgia Grigiripoulou from Athens, Greece, 5-10 guard Tess Heal out of Melbourne, Australia, and 6-0 guard Marya Hudgins from Aurora, Colo.

• Heal played with the Australia U18 Women's National Team in India during early September at the FIBA U18 Women's Asian Championship. She helped the Gems not only qualify for the 2023 FIBA U19 Women's World Cup, but was also part of the team's first-ever championship at the event, as the Gems went undefeated to hoist the trophy

TICKET INFORMATION
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