On Jan. 30, UCSD women’s basketball (19-15, 13-7 Big West) hosted the Hawai’i Rainbow Wahine (22-9, 16-4 Big West) at LionTree Arena. Sophomore guard Sumayah Sugapong had the ball in her hands in the final possession but missed a game-winning layup. The Tritons would go on to lose in overtime.
This afternoon, in Henderson, Nevada, Sugapong got a second chance. The San Diego native had already led the No. 4-seeded Tritons to the Big West Championship semifinal in the program’s first-ever Division-I postseason appearance. And, as the saying goes, big-time players make big-time plays.
Tied at 49 with nine seconds to go, Sugapong drove into the paint with a head of steam and kissed the game-winning layup off the backboard and through the hoop, sending the Tritons to the title game over No. 1-seeded Hawai’i.
“I really beat myself up after that layup, when we lost in overtime, so this one for sure felt good,” Sugapong said to The UCSD Guardian in a postgame interview. “Really happy it went in!”
The game was a tale of two halves. The Tritons dominated early and entered halftime with a 23-point lead. Graduate guard Parker Montgomery led the way, with 16 points on 6-8 shooting and 4 3-pointers. The scales tipped the other way in the second half. UCSD scored a total of 10 points, and a particularly bad stretch in the final period saw them fail to score for eight minutes.
Tomorrow’s game against No. 3 UC Davis is the first-ever Big West final for UCSD. This is the first year of postseason eligibility for the Tritons after joining Division I five years ago.
“This is our opportunity to show what we’re capable of,” said Montgomery. “The past four years, when we couldn’t do postseason, we were eligible for the postseason. For this team, we just get to show what we’ve been doing in D1. We can hang with these teams, we’ve beat plenty of these teams, and we’re proving it right now.”
“I feel like, throughout the season, we have learned to win,” head coach Heidi VanDerveer said. “And now we are learning what it is to be a champion.”
