Big West Women's Basketball Tournament Presented by MemorialCare Bracket
The bracket for the 2018 Big West Women's Basketball Tournament presented by MemorialCare is set and the action will begin Tuesday at Titan Gym on the campus of Cal State Fullerton.
The first round slate on Tuesday starts at 6pm with a matchup between #8 Hawai'i and #5 CSUN. That will be followed at 8:30 pm by defending Tournament champion #7 Long Beach State against #6 UC Riverside.
The two winners will advance to the quarterfinals to face off against #3 UC Irvine and #4 UC Santa Barbara. The lowest remaining seed will take on the Anteaters at 6:00 pm, while the highest remaining seed will square off against the Gauchos at 8:30 pm.
After a day off, the quarterfinal winners will join #1 UC Davis and #2 Cal Poly at Honda Center for the semifinal round. The regular season champion Aggies will take on the lowest remaining seed at 12:00 pm, while the Mustangs await the highest remaining seed at 2:30 pm.
All games through the semifinal round will be shown live on ESPN3.
Championship Saturday will see the semifinal winners clash at 4:00 pm on FOX #PrimeTicket for the Tournament crown and the league's automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament.
Jen Gross is the Women's Big West Coach of the Year.
Frist team All Big West: Morgan Bertsch
Second team All Big West: Pele Gianotti and Rachel Nagel
Honorable Mention: Dani Nafekh
All Freshman Team: Cierra Hall
From the Big West website:
Gross led UC Davis to back-to-back Big West titles, the first time since 2007-09 that a program has won consecutive outright Big West titles. The Aggies equaled their program record for conference wins (14) and are one win shy of tying the school record for victories (25) set last season. The team has also won its last 14 home games against Big West foes and this season became the quickest to 20 wins in program Division I history. Under Gross, UCD has now posted back-to-back 20 win seasons for the second time in program DI history and the first since the 2009-11. The squad has also clinched its second straight postseason appearance, earning at least a bid to the WNIT. Gross is now the first coach to win back-to-back Coach of the Year awards since UC Santa Barbara legend Mark French accomplished the feat in 1999-01.
The Ags scored 4 points in the 2nd quarter. The Ags were asleep at the wheel until they turned up the defense with the press. The offense is totally out of sync though. The Ags need to regroup and play like they are capable.
This was literally the epitome of survive to play again. The Ags won this game with defense because the offense was totally out of sync the whole game. The number of unforced TO's was hard to watch. I hope we got that out of our system because we'll need to play much, much better to win another game.
Well that was tough to watch. Don’t understand why ucr didn’t foul earlier on out last possession and why a layup down by 3. But we’ll take it. Hopefully that does away with any tightness we may have felt. Good Aggie support, except for one idiot who should have his Aggie sweatshirt taken away.