The Sacramento State Women’s Basketball team broke its four game losing streak with a victory against UC Davis Saturday afternoon. The 53-45 win leaves the Hornets with a 2-4 overall record.

The Hornets came out strong; capturing a lead early on and never letting the Aggies take a large lead after that. The Hornets had an eight point lead going into halftime.

Neither team shot over 35 percent according to hornetsports.com, leaving the teams to rely heavily on defense.

The Hornets lost their lead quickly going into the second half. The two teams battled back and fourth with the Aggies coming up with a 41-40 lead with less than three and a half minutes left in the game.

The Hornets then took control as Erika Edwards scored to give Sac State the lead. The Hornets scored on four of the next five possessions.

Junior, Charday Hunt shot a three pointer from the corner of the court with 1:07 left in the game which gave the Hornets a 47-41 lead. The lead proved to be too big to overcome for UC Davis as the Hornets scored six more points to the Aggies’ four before the game ended.

“The way we executed the first ten minutes of the game was awesome,” head coach Dan Muscatell said. “We moved the basketball and moved ourselves.”

“It’s sweet to win the causeway,” he said. “We needed to win regardless of who we played. We needed to make a statement for ourselves. We executed well on defense”

Muscatell and his team put extra time into preparing for the game.

“We must have watched at least two-and-a-half hours of film,” Muscatell said.

“We’ve just been working on all of their stuff,” junior forward, Erika Edwards said about preparing for the game. “We knew they would try to ‘back door’ us and shoot threes on us.”

Edwards had 12 rebounds against the Aggies. It was the fifth game this season that she had 10 or more rebounds.

“We knew what to expect from Davis,” junior, Charday Hunt said. “It was intense. It wasn’t the same team that beat us last year.”

Hunt scored a game-high 19 points against Davis. She said that the highlight of the game for her was when she shot the three-pointer from the corner just as the shot clock expired.

“It felt so good (to win). We were preparing all week,” Hunt said. “We needed that win.”

On a side note, this victory was not only for the womens basketball team, but for all of the Hornets’ sports teams as well. The Hornets are now only 2.5 points behind the Aggies in the 2008-09 Causeway Cup.

Amy Lewis can be reached at [email protected]