Ashland, Ore. | After clinching a spot in the Cascade Collegiate Conference Postseason Tournament earlier this week, the Warner Pacific University Women's Basketball team (12-12, 10-9) dropped a potential game from their conference win-column in a road loss to the Southern Oregon University Raiders (23-4, 16-3), with the narrow race for a higher tourney seed growing even closer after the 52-82 defeat.
 
After the first match between WPU and SOU was forced to result in a forfeit due to Covid-19 protocols, both teams went into tonight's contest quite blind, with only game film of other conference contest to work with. Southern Oregon, who currently sits at the top of the conference standings in a two-way tie for first place with Lewis-Clark State, matches up with quite the size advantage against a guard-heavy Warner Pacific lineup.
 
The aforementioned size advantage played a role early and often in tonight's matchup, with Southern Oregon pounding the ball inside to their 5'11 sophomore super-athlete Kami Walk, who is undoubtedly SOU's most potent offensive threat. The constant opportunities that arise with her presence on the court results in multiple open looks for her perimeter shooters, which is where the direction of this game went from start to finish.
 
Despite being outshot, outrebounded, and outperformed in the first quarter, Warner Pacific trailed Southern Oregon by only four points, which felt like a blessing considering the amount of WPU fouls committed in the first five minutes alone. Shooting only 29% from the field as a team, the Knights needed to find an answer on offense quickly, as their defensive stops would only decrease in number from this point in the contest.
 
Given the sticky foul situation, Knights' Head Coach Matt Gregg had to dip into his bench just a minute and a half into the first quarter, resulting in key reserve players for Warner Pacific needing to step up and find ways to expose a consistent Raiders' playstyle.
 
Unfortunately for the Knights, nobody ever took that extra step forward, resulting in the steady growth of Southern Oregon's lead over the final three quarters of play. The WPU offensive execution improved slightly over the course of the final 30 minutes, but Warner Pacific finished the evening shooting just 34.9% from the floor, while Southern Oregon cashed in on 47.5% of their field goals.
 
The Knights were led tonight by senior guard Courtney Jackson, who scored a game-high 13 points on 5-of-10 shooting and recorded three rebounds in 25 minutes played. Freshman guard Amalya Sales posted nine points and a pair of steals off the bench for Warner Pacific.
 
Walk tied Jackson with 13 points of her own, playing just 18 minutes in her usual starting role with a couple of rebounds to show for it. Guard Kalei Iwami came off the bench to score 11 points by hitting three of her six attempts from behind the three-point line, along with a pair of assists and steals.
 
The Knights return to action tomorrow afternoon for their final regular season road contest of the year, traveling to Klamath Falls, Ore. to battle the Oregon Tech Hustlin' Owls at 3pm PDT.