CWU women’s basketball team came out with an important 63-56 win over Saint Martin’s University pushing their record to 8-11 on the season and 3-8 in the conference.  

Head coach Jeff Harada expressed how big the win was and the confidence of the team.

“It’s huge, this was a win we needed,” Harada said,

Sophomore guard Sadie Mensing led the way scoring 14 points on 5-for-7 shooting, while adding six rebounds, five assists, three steals, and a block.

“Sadie hangs her hand on her defense,” Harada said. “We see in practice every day how she can score, we challenge her to do it in the games against other people.”

Mensing was big in many phases of the game.

“I definitely want [to] contribute in every way I can,” Mensing said. “I try [to] let defense come to offense.”

Senior guard Kortney Grattic added 12 points on 5-8 shooting. While junior guard Jasmin Edwards chipped in with seven points, eight rebounds, four assists, and three steals.

“She’s given us everything she has,” Harada said about Edwards. “But her energy, effort, quickness and speed really help her out. She’s a warrior and she’s all over the place.”

The Wildcats defense had a good night with 27 defensive rebounds, eight steals, and three blocks.

“Bring the intensity on defense and just go hard on rebounds,” Edwards talking about the defensive focus.

The Wildcats shot 49.1 percent.

“Anytime you can shoot 49 or 50 percent for a game, you hope you come out on top,” Harada said. “I think a big reason for our high percentage was transition baskets.”

The Wildcats had 22 assists on 27 made baskets.

“I think we shot the ball well because we were really sharing the ball, making really good cuts, getting open looks, and fast breaking,” Mensing added.  

“A lot of it was we had a lot of transition layups, we took high percentage shots,” Edwards said.

The Wildcats also outscored the Saints 20-0 on fastbreak points.

“The last two, three weeks of practice we’ve really been working on our transition and our fast break,” Harada speaking on the transition game “I was happy to see us really do that tonight.”

The Wildcats are looking forward to facing the conference a second time around and embracing the challenge.

“We came together as a team this week after a tough loss last Saturday,” Harada said “[We] decided, second time around in conference we got 10 games to go and we’re going to try to take it one by one.”

Next up for the Wildcats is Seattle Pacific University on Saturday Jan. 28. The Falcons come in with a 14-5 overall record and 6-5 in the conference. The two teams played previously on Dec 29. In Seattle with the Falcons taking a close 64-58 win.