CWU women’s basketball took on Northwest University in an exhibition game to open their season.

CWU is returning 14 of their 15 players from last year and hopes to use their experience to have a successful year.  This is Randi Richardson’s first game as a head coach, she served as an assistant coach at CWU for two years.

“It went well, I was really proud of my kids, we did a lot of what we asked them to do,” Richardson said. “We wanted to pick up the pace and push in transition. I feel like we did a lot of what we wanted to do well tonight.”

From the tipoff CWU started off on a 9-0 run to force Northwest to use a timeout within the first two minutes. Jasmine Edwards started off hot by scoring five of the first 12 points. CWU defense recorded four steals in the first quarter.

CWU hit their first six 3-pointers to extend their lead in the first quarter 33-15.  

Junior guard Sadie Mensing led the team halfway through the game with nine points and three steals for a halftime score of 50-33. Sophomore forward Kaelie Flores scored seven points and grabbed five rebounds.

“We started off really strong tonight. We had a lot of energy, keeping that up the whole time and having fresh legs because we were running a lot in transition,” Flores said.

Flores finished the night with 11 points, nine rebounds and three blocks. She shot 83 percent from the field.

CWU got hot from the 3-point line in the first half, shooting a total of 56 percent while hitting nine 3-pointers from seven different players. Defense was the strong point of the first half for CWU, recording nine steals and three blocks and forcing 13 turnovers.

The Wildcats protected the ball throughout the game only turning the ball over seven times and allowing two steals.

CWU started right where they left off in the second half, going on a 12-2 run to start the third quarter.

“We got the ball up the floor really fast, causing a lot of transition points. Defense was definitely the cause of that,” Mensing said.

The third quarter belonged to CWU, outscoring the opponent 28-5. At the end of the quarter CWU led 78-38, including 13 points from Mensing.

Richardson used almost all of her players in the win— 14 different players saw the court for the Wildcats, 11 of which scored.

Most of the starting lineup was out of the game in the third quarter, allowing the underclassmen and all of the bench players to get a lot of quality playing time.

The Wildcats rebounding dominated the fourth quarter and finished the game with a score of 97-51.

“There is always little things to work on between games, improving on defense, communicating, shot selection and things like that we can always improve on.” Mensing said.

Mensing was named player of the game, recording 13 points, three assists and three steals.

CWU takes on Seattle University October 4. The game is at Seattle U. at 4 p.m. This will be the first game of the year for Seattle University.