SAN DIEGO – The Chaminade University women's basketball team opened the southern California portion of their five-game road trip Saturday with a 75-57 defeat to Point Loma at Golden Gymnasium.
Sameera Elmasri (Shawnee, Kan./Birmingham-Southern Univ./Saint Thomas Aquinas HS) paced the Silverswords with a game-high 24 points, hitting four 3-pointers, and had six steals, five rebounds and three assists.
Kali Jones (Hyrum, Utah/Mountain Crest) added 10 points and seven rebounds and
Maddy Weaver (Puyallup, Wash./Puyallup) six boards as the 'Swords fell to 5-12 and 4-7 in the Pacific West Conference.
Tavia Rowell had 13 points for the Sea Lions who are 14-4 on the year and, at 9-1, remained in a tie with Azusa Pacific atop the PacWest standings.
Chaminade's lone lead was 2-0 on their opening possession thanks to
Morgan Escobedo's (Scottsdale, Ariz./Pinnacle) wide-open driving layup. But the Sea Lions forced seven turnovers and hit a trio of triples to take a 19-7 first quarter edge.
The 'Swords struggle in the field continued in the second quarter, resulting in making just eight of their 29 first half shots while PLNU continued its hot shooting with a 16-of-28 (57.1 percent) at the break to own a 42-24 halftime lead. However, CUH did manage to force four turnovers in the second period.
After Jones' layup to begin the third quarter to cut the deficit to 16, the Sea Lions followed on a 15-1 run to quash any notions of a Chaminade rally.
The 'Swords shot 33.3 percent from the floor, made six 3-pointers and was 7-of-11 at the foul line. They grabbed 35, dished out 12 assists with 12 steals while forcing 18 turnovers.
The Sea Lions were 50 percent from the field with eight triples and made all nine trips to the charity stripe. They had 39 rebounds, 17 assists and had eight blocked shots.
The Silverswords will be at Concordia University Irvine on Monday in the third game of their trip. Tipoff is at 3 p.m. Hawai'i time.
