By Lindsey Boyd
The seniors didn’t let a Mountain Pacific Sports Federation win slip away from them as they defeated No. 22 CSU Bakersfield (12-15, 0-6 MPSF) on Senior Day.
With junior McKenna Yates’ game-winning shot, No. 16 San Jose State (10-16, 1-4 MPSF) broke the back-and-forth tie and earned SJSU it’s first win in the MPSF conference this season.
“That was big,” said head coach Gabor Sarusi on Yates’ goal. “I’m glad she didn’t stop shooting because a lot of players would just stop shooting if the game wasn’t going the way they wanted it to.”
Yates had missed several shots from the same position.
Although SJSU started with a quick two-point lead, Bakersfield was not going down without a resilient fight.
The match was tied five times and SJSU temporarily lost the lead before half time 6-5. Sarusi attributed the defensive mistakes in the second quarter to the excitement of senior day.
“It’s crazy that we were even down by a goal,” said senior Donna Momen.
After re-grouping at half time and telling themselves to “make the seniors proud,” the Spartans only gave up one goal for the rest of the match.
“Honestly it was a little hard especially at the end of the third quarter we were tied 6-6,” Momen said. “like ‘yeah it’s senior day’ but … it’s basically a 0-0 game and that last quarter really showed who wanted it more.”
The Spartans proved that they did in fact want it more in their last home game of the season, taking the lead 8-7 with under a minute to go.
SJSU will take on No. 2 Stanford in the last match of the season Saturday April, 22 at 1 p.m.