The Sacramento State women’s basketball team is on a three-game winning streak, its longest streak since the 2009-10 season.

Last year, the Hornets struggled and ended up going 4-25 in a season that featured a 19-game losing streak.

This season’s winning streak already gives the Hornets 75 percent of the wins they had last season and the same amount of wins they had at home last year – three.

The Hornets are averaging 81 points per game during the winning streak compared with the 60 points per game during their three losses to begin the season. 

The women’s team is young and is made up of five freshman, six sophomores, three juniors and one senior. With more than half the team having little or no experience, the Hornets were trying to find themselves as a team early in the season, but they have come together as a team in the past week.

Head coach Jamie Craighead said she has seen some things she likes so far.

“We’re young, we’re trying to learn the system,” Craighead said. “I like our post play inside and I think our shooters have really stepped up. I think they are picking up on things we do pretty quickly.”

Through four games, junior forward Kylie Kuhns is averaging 12.7 points per game and 11.5 rebounds per game and senior forward Emily Christensen leads the team in scoring with 13 points per game and three pointers with 18.

To keep the season going in the right direction, Kuhns said she thinks the team needs to relax and make better decisions.

“We need to work on being smart,” Kuhns said. “We’re really young and we have a lot of people getting their first college minutes. We’re letting the pressure get to us. We need to do what we do in practice in the games.”

Christensen said having four straight games at home is helpful for the team.

“One of our goals is always to win all of our home games,” Christensen said. “You want to protect your home court. I think that will help with the energy and having fans here and supporting us. Not just our four fans that come to away games. I think it will help with everything, being at home is always nice.”

The Hornets have seven games remaining on their non-conference schedule before Big Sky play begins on Dec. 29.

Craighead said playing the non-conference games are a good way to see where the team is at.

“We’re trying to work and get everything in by the Big Sky season and using these preseason games to kind of work out some kinks,” Craighead said. “We’re still learning the system. It’s a true system. Full court pressure and playing as fast as we want to play is still something we are working on.”

The Hornets will look to increase their winning streak to four games Thursday when they host  Fresno Pacific University at the Nest at 7:05 p.m. It will be the final home game for the Hornets before they head out on a four-game road trip.

Josh Stanley can be reached at [email protected].