The Tritons were going back to March Madness. With less than 15 seconds left on the clock in the Big West Championship final and the Tritons up by 12, the dejected Rainbow Wahine let senior guard Sabrina Ma dribble out the clock. It was a remarkable achievement for Ma, who went 30-10 in the Big West, received an honorable mention from the All-Big West team, and spent every March dancing in her two years as a Triton.
As Ma dribbled, junior guard Dymonique Maxie, her AAU-turned-Triton teammate, and senior guard Makayla Rose embraced her in a hug. In the stands, her parents — who attended nearly every game this season — cheered wildly for their daughter. March is for the dreamers, and Ma got to live out that dream with her families on and off the court. At 4:45 p.m. on March 14 in Lee’s Family Forum, Ma and the rest of the UC San Diego team became back-to-back Big West champions, set to lace up their dancing shoes once again.
As she prepares to graduate from UCSD, Ma sat down for an interview with The UCSD Guardian to reflect on her storied collegiate career.
Ma grew up in a basketball family. Her father, Steven Ma, played in high school, and her uncle was a coach for an AAU team. The pair became Ma’s first coaches and inspired her love of the sport. By seventh grade, Ma had joined her uncle’s team, traveling across California to take on some of the best competition the state had to offer.
After graduating from high school, Ma emerged as a key starter for San Jose State, a nearby Division-I program and her dad’s alma mater. She averaged 9.5 points per game across 62 games. Though Ma found her footing quickly, the Spartans were unable to do the same. In both her freshman and sophomore seasons, SJSU finished near the bottom of the Mountain West standings.
“Our first season at San Jose State, we had only won six games,” Ma said. “And I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to try to figure this out. We have a lot of potential, a lot of talent, and we’ll see how we do in my second year.’ Next year, we ended up winning seven games. After that year, I was like, ‘I think I want to transfer.’”
Although transferring meant that it would be more difficult for Ma’s family to attend her games, they were supportive of her decision. At her uncle’s suggestion, Ma turned toward a rising program entering its first-ever season of Division-I eligibility: UCSD. The school was Ma’s first and only visit. By the end of her trip, she was part of the team. Welcome to La Jolla, Sabrina.
Ma found her rhythm and quickly cemented her place as a pivotal part of head coach Heidi VanDerveer’s starting lineup. In her first season with the Tritons, UCSD won the Big West Championship and earned a berth in March Madness, where it fell to Southern in the First Four. This season, the Tritons won their first-ever Big West regular-season crown, following a program-record 17 Big West victories. But what Ma treasures most are her friendships in the team.
“Everyone’s just super authentic,” Ma said. “I think that’s what really makes us mesh. Over the summer, we would stay together in the same dorm, so we would always be around each other, and so we would just all hang out all the time. I think that definitely helped a lot because even now, when we’re all living in our separate buildings or whatever, we still hang out outside of practice.”
Off the court, the team bonds through traditions like its pregame coffee club. Followers of the team’s coffee club Instagram account will note that most of the team’s coffee club meetings happen before away games, allowing the athletes to explore new cities. Spearheaded by associate head coach Vanessa Nygaard, the team gets together, decides on a cafe spot within walking distance, and answers a “question of the day” to get the conversation flowing.
One morning over coffee, the team pondered the question, “If I could be in any animated series, what would it be?” The conversation preceded a road victory against a less-caffeinated Big West opponent. (To her credit, Ma said, “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”) Small outings like these have made the team a home away from home for Ma.
Though she was playing hundreds of miles away from home, Sabrina’s parents continued to attend her games. Groupies of the Sabrina Ma Experience, the Mas traversed college basketball’s Wild West to watch their daughter tear up the court. They were often the loudest voices in the building, home or away. You could frequently spot Steven Ma wearing his classic yellow Triton sweater in the stands.
“This year, I don’t think they missed [more than one or two games],” Ma said. “At the beginning of the season, my dad was like, ‘Let me know your schedule, like send it out early.’ So then, he would, like, prebook all the flights so that they were cheap.”
Her parents watched the entirety of Ma’s historic senior campaign. Following Big West success and a first-ever regular-season title, the Tritons headed to Henderson, Nevada, for the Big West Championship in March. UCSD faced UC Davis in the Big West Championship semifinal on March 13, and Ma scored a team-high 21 points in the 84-79 victory. The Tritons only had one more foe to overcome in order to claim their Big West title: the Hawai’i Rainbow Wahine.
In the Big West Championship final, the Tritons entered halftime down by 8 points. For the first time all season, the dream of winning back-to-back conference titles was starting to slip from the team’s grasp. With no choice but to trust each other, Ma and the defending champions gave the final 20 minutes of the game all they had — and it worked.
“When you’re on the court, your [teammates] are literally all that you have,” Ma said. “Just being able to trust each other and play for each other, I think that’s just super powerful, and that’s what motivated us. … We just had to realize, this is bigger than ourselves; we were going to do this for the people on our left, the people on our right.”
At the end of the day, the best basketball is played together. Everything started clicking in the second half: A triple by redshirt junior guard Rosa Smith cut Hawai’i’s lead to four, and then a Maxie floater tied the game at 34. A pair of free throws by junior center Erin Condron pushed UCSD ahead at 38-37 in the third quarter.
Ma opened the scoring in the fourth, draining a floater from outside the key to take a 5-point lead. The tide shifted. With less than a minute left, Ma delivered the dagger, nailing a layup to widen UCSD’s lead to a decisive 12 points. The Tritons ultimately outscored the Rainbow Wahine 40-20 in the second half en route to a 60-48 victory.
When the buzzer went off, Ma soaked it all in. She was hugging two teammates in one hand with the basketball in the other. More than just a representation of the team’s hard work, winning the Big West Championship in the final few moments of Ma’s college career was the culmination of all the love and joy that basketball has brought Ma.
“I was just dribbling the ball, and I see Dymo’s face light up,” Ma recounted. “We’re all just smiling, and we just hugged each other like, ‘We did it.’ After all of our work in the summer, the fall, the preseason, all the ups and downs, we finally accomplished what we set out for.”
After the game, Ma rushed over to her parents, her first fans. The three embraced in the sea of blue and gold. One year prior, they had celebrated her first-ever Big West Championship victory. One week prior, they had celebrated her first-ever Big West regular-season title. And in just a week’s time, they would travel a thousand miles away to Texas for Ma’s second March Madness.
Even though the Mas live hundreds of miles apart, basketball brought the family under the same roof for a few hours twice a week during Ma’s grueling 5-month season. Her parents cheered loudly from the stands while their daughter dazzled the crowd with that patented Sabrina Ma long-range jump shot. And for the second straight March, the Mas gathered in Lee’s Family Forum to hug, crying as they celebrated Sabrina Ma lifting the Big West trophy.
“Growing up, my dad wasn’t a super emotional person, but he loves basketball, and he loves watching me play,” Ma said. “I think it was super special that they were able to come to all of my games. It’s always so special and heartwarming when your parents are like, ‘I’m so proud of you, of everything that you’ve done.’ … That’s probably one of my favorite things about basketball is seeing how happy it makes me and my parents.”
Though the Tritons lost to TCU in the first round of March Madness, Ma’s legacy at UCSD is laden with trophies and friendship. In her time with the Tritons, Ma’s contributions turned a program that had never seen the postseason into a Big West powerhouse.
As she prepares to graduate with a bachelor’s degree in international business this quarter, she’s turning her attention to the future. Ma has received some overseas interest from professional teams. While basketball will always be a part of her life, she’s currently weighing whether or not to start playing abroad immediately.
Closing the UCSD chapter of her life does not mean forgetting the team spirit the Tritons have instilled in her. Ma will cherish the community she’s created with her teammates as she moves forward. And, in turn, she hopes that the legacy she leaves behind is one filled with joy.
“I want to be known as a great teammate — being someone who is able to make other people laugh and make other people smile and be the thing that brightens people’s days, even when things aren’t going great,” Ma said.
