Megan Lindsley

In its last showing of the regular season, The Master’s College women’s basketball team defeated the Hope International Royals 85-70 Saturday night at Bross Court.

Despite the Royals having a hopeful one-point lead in the early moments of the contest, the Lady Mustangs controlled the court from start to finish.  At the 18:53 mark in the second half, TMC posted an evening-high 23-point lead (46-23) when freshman standout Megan Lindsley (Vancouver, WA) drained a three-pointer.

At the end of the evening, Lindsley led TMC’s scoring efforts by draining a season-high 26 points.  Jacquelyn Marshall (San Clemente, CA) earned a double-double based off her 17 points and 13 rebounds.

Also scoring double figures, Bianca Cubello (Riverside, CA) drained 14 points while Whitney Best (Snohomish, WA) put up 12 more.

As a team, the Lady Mustangs went 29-57 (50%), 10-24 (41%) behind the arc, and 17-24 (70%) from the charity stripe.

“I’m definitely pleased with how we battled tonight,” assessed head coach Dan Waldeck. “We knew they were going to make a big push as they are a great offensive team. Our team controlled the boards and limited them to one shot most of the game. We rebounded well and I’m very proud of our efforts.”

With the win over the 17th-ranked Royals (20-9, 8-6 GSAC), the 7th-ranked Lady Mustangs enter into the postseason with a 22-7 overall record, and a 10-4 GSAC record.

In addition, Saturday’s victory over the Royals wins the tiebreak with Westmont College for the GSAC Tournament’s second seed.  In conference play, TMC’s 2-0 record over Hope International trumps third-seeded Westmont’s 1-1 record against the Royals.

On Wednesday, the Lady Mustangs will kick-off the conference tournament with the second seed, and will host the eighth-seeded San Diego Christian Hawks (11-16, 2-12 GSAC).

“San Diego is really athletic and is playing good basketball right now,” commented Waldeck. They’ll give us a tough game. We need to keep improving so that we can be where we need to be at the end of the season. Our kid’s are getting better and we’ll hopefully have a full squad very soon.”

Tipoff is set for 5:30 p.m.

GSAC Women’s Basketball News:

In other GSAC action, Concordia beat Arizona Christian 75-56, No. 1 Vanguard defeated San Diego Christian 82-59, while No. 11 Westmont beat Biola 67-42.