On the night junior guard Raven Benton was honored for reaching 1,000 career points, becoming the 24th player in Long Beach State history to do so, the women’s basketball team dominated UC Irvine 67-49.
The crowd and 49er players stood up and applauded for Benton as head coach Jody Wynn handed a basketball with Benton’s name and the number 1,000 written in black. Benton surpassed the milestone during LBSU’s (21-7, 10-4) win at Cal Poly Wednesday.
“I’m just so proud of her,” Wynn said. “She came to us as a really prolific high school scorer, but she’s really learn how to score when the ball isn’t always in her hands and she’s learn to see the floor. [She’s] just become an overall much better basketball player.”
Benton now has 1,011 career points as a Long Beach State player.
Despite reaching a career milestone, the 5-foot-10-inch guard scored nine points,going 4-14 from the field and 1-5 from behind the arc against UC Irvine (4-24, 1-13) inside the Walter Pyramid on Saturday.
Benton was still a factor in the win thanks to her all-around performance. She recorded eight rebounds, five assists, three steals and only turned the ball over once.
“Sometimes when she was younger, when she didn’t shoot the ball well, she would kind of get into her own head, and sometimes earlier this year she would do that as well,” Wynn said. “But she didn’t do that tonight. She just kept playing, let the game come to her a lot more in the second half and she rebounded the ball really well and that I think got her some confidence.”
As for the poor shooting performance, Benton said she just couldn’t get her shots going and that a lot of them were rushed.
The game began with Coach Wynn taking a quick timeout at the 8:54 mark after the Anteaters scored two quick baskets to give them a 4-0 lead.
Coming out of the timeout, sophomore guard Cece Wilson dropped a triple to cut into the Anteater lead. A minute later the 49ers took a 5-4 lead and from that point on UCI would not tie or regain the lead.
The 49ers outscored the Anteaters 23-7 in the first quarter with Montgomery scoring eight of her 13 points in the quarter.
“We’re notorious for getting off of a bad start,” Anteater head coach Doug Oliver said. “Each and every game, or every other game, [the] first quarter just haunts us and we miss shots, turn the ball over and it just puts us behind and it was no different today.”
The Anteaters’ closest opportunity to getting back into the game came in the second quarter as UCI had a 9-0 run to come within 12 points.
Junior forward Jewelyn Sawyer ended UCI’s hopes, stopping the run with a jumper that gave LBSU a 30-16 lead with 4:52 left in the quarter.
The 49ers’ biggest lead of the game was 23 points, which came in the fourth quarter with 5:42 left.
Anteaters sophomore forward Jenny Dee had a team-high 13 points for the game; six of those points came in the second quarter when UCI came within 12.
As for the 49ers, Montgomery led the team with 13 points and sophomore guard Gigi Hascheff scored 11 points, nine of which came from behind the arc.
After Hawai’i’s loss to UC Riverside on Saturday, the 49ers took possession of second place in the Big West with only two games remaining in the season.
LBSU will host UC Davis Thursday at the Walter Pyramid. Tip off for the final home game of the season is at 7 p.m.