Box Score HAYWARD, Calif. – The Cal State East Bay women's basketball team gave No. 1-ranked UC San Diego a scare before suffering a 75-57 setback at the hands of an undefeated Tritons team on Saturday night at Pioneer Gym. The Pioneers (11-15, 8-12 CCAA) took a one-point lead into the half, shot 50 percent from three-point range and matched the league's top rebounding team board-for-board in the loss.

“I thought the team came out ready to compete against the No. 1 team in the nation,” Head Coach Suzy Barcomb said. “I think the score is deceiving, we played a better game than the score might indicate. I'm very proud of how this group has developed over the last few weeks, facing all the adversity we have and for us to still be in the hunt for a playoff spot is pretty amazing.”

For the second straight night freshman Micah Walker led the Pioneers in scoring, posting 23 points on 4-for-8 shooting from beyond the arc. Walker also added four rebounds, three assists and a block in a team-high 33 minutes on the court. Sophomore Brianna Terrance came off the bench to provide a spark for East Bay, scoring 12 points and adding six rebounds, marking her 11th game of the season with double-digit points. Cassie Coble joined Terrance and Walker in double figures, scoring 10 points on 4-of-8 shooting from the field while adding four rebounds and a block. Junior Marlene MacMillan led the Pioneer rebounding efforts, grabbing 13 boards, including a game-high five offensive boards and added six points, four assists and two steals.

“Micah was truly amazing tonight on the offensive end of the floor and provided us with momentum the carried over to the defensive end of the floor,” Barcomb said. “Add in Cassie and Bri and we had some real positives on the offensive end. Mac was back to her usual self on the glass and it fires up her teammates when she grabs that many boards.”

Four of the Tritons five starters reached double digits in scoring, led by Chelsea Carlisle's 22. Daisy Feder added 17 on 4-of-9 shooting from three-point range, while Lauren Freidenberg and Emily Osga posed 14 and 10, respectively. Erin Dautremont came off the bench to lead UCSD on the boards, pulling down nine rebounds, while Feder grabbed eight and Osga posted seven.

The Pioneers shot nearly the same percentage in the first and second halves to finish the game shooting 38.3 percent from the field. The difference came from beyond the three-point line, where East Bay went 5-for-8 in the first frame and just 1-for-4 in the second half. On the other end, the Tritons shot 45.8 percent from the field and knocked down 10 threes, hitting five in each half. The Pioneers matched UC San Diego on the boards, with each team grabbing 36 and scoring 12 second-chance points. East Bay held the advantage in the paint, out-scoring the Tritons 20-12 in the lane.

Freidenberg scored the first six points for the Tritons, who took a 6-4 lead four minutes into a first half that saw four ties and nine lead changes. The Pioneers answered with six straight points, including four from Walker, to take a 10-6 lead with 13:45 left in the half. UCSD pulled back and regained the lead thanks to five straight points from Megan Perry before East Bay went on a 9-3 run marked by a pair of threes from Walker to take its largest lead of the game, 19-14, with just under nine minutes to play.

The Tritons responded with a run of their own, outscoring East Bay 10-4 over the next three minutes to regain a one-point lead, 24-23. Though the Pioneers got five straight from MacMillan and Walker, who hit her third three of the half, UCSD knocked down back-to-back threes with less than two minutes left to take a 30-28 lead, matching its largest of the half. Walker wasn't done, however, as she hit her fourth three of the half at the one-minute mark to put East Bay up 31-30 at the break.

UC San Diego came out of halftime on a mission, hitting its first four shots, all threes to build a nine-point lead, 42-33, in the first three minutes of the second frame. Though East Bay cut the lead back to seven on a MacMillan jumper, UCSD answered with a 9-2 run to push the lead to 14, 51-37, with 15:05 left in the half. A Terrance layup cut the lead to 12 and sparked a four-minute East Bay scoring streak that saw it close the gap to just five, 51-46. During the Triton drought, the Pioneers got six points from Terrance and a three from Coble to shrink the UCSD lead to the smallest it had been since the 18:37 mark in the second half.

From that point, however, East Bay would not get any closer than six points over the next four minutes and trailed 58-52 with 6:44 left in the half. The Tritons then scored 10 unanswered points that was part of a 14-2 run for UCSD that put it up 72-54 with 2:07 remaining. Though the Pioneers cut the gap to 16, the lead was too much to overcome as UC San Diego picked up its 25th win of the season to remain undefeated during the 2011-12 campaign.

“We came out of the gate very slow in the second half and allowed UCSD to gain energy by hitting their patterned deep three-ball,” Barcomb said. “We dug ourselves out of the hole and got within single digits a couple of times, but just could not get a shot to fall or catch a break.”

The East Bay loss, combined with wins by both Cal State San Bernardino and Sonoma State, puts the Pioneers back in a three-way tie for seventh place in the CCAA with the Coyotes and Seawolves. Only the last two spots in the postseason conference tournament remain and East Bay has split the season series with both teams. If the teams are still tied following the end of the regular season, after head-to-head record, the next tiebreaker is record against teams already seeded in the tournament, beginning with the No. 1 seed and moving down. If the tie remains, the next tiebreaker would be record against teams not in the tournament, beginning with the ninth-place team. The CCAA Tournament field will be announced on Saturday, Feb. 25 at 10 a.m.

Cal State East Bay returns to action for the final two games of the regular season next weekend when it travels to Chico State and Cal State Stanislaus. The Pioneers and Wildcats are set to kick off the weekend on Thursday, Feb. 23 at 5:30 p.m. in Chico.