@ CSUN & Louisville

The Pilots women’s basketball team opens the season tonight against Cal State Northridge, and then travel weary and with their circadian rythms thrown off, they play at No. 9 Louisville on Sunday at 9 am PST.

Northridge enters the season with eight returning letter winners and four starters from a team that finished 17-14 and participated in the Women's National Invitational Tournament (WNIT), and Matador head coach Jason Flowers was named Big West Conference Coach of the Year.

For those of you who attended the Louisville game at the Chiles Center last season, you know the Pilots have next to zero chance of winning, but the game against the Cardinals will make the rest of the games this season seem easy in comparison.

Without 6-2 junior guard Cassandra Brown it’s going to be a long, long year for the Pilots.....

Ugly night in Southern California.

The Pilots were in the game for the first 30 minutes, and lead at the half, but 26 turnovers and a 36-7 second half run by CSUN sealed UP's fate in its 70-51 loss.

It gets a lot tougher on Sunday......

According to the UP write up, the Pilots lead by ~10 points with 13 minutes to go in the 2nd half. They lost by 19 points. How do you have a 29 point swing in the final 13 minutes?! To CSUN?!

It went just about as expected for the Pilots against Louisville this morning as All-America Shoni Schimmel scored 16 points in 22 minutes for the Cardinals as they downed UP 95-48.

Again, like Friday night against CSUN, turnovers played a big part, but were not in themselves the deciding factor. UP committed 32 turnovers, 14 alone by PG Jasmine Wooton.

Freshman Ellen Nurmi got the start for a fatigued Pilots group and scored 10, as did sophomore Kari Luttinen. Freshman Annika Holopainen scored eight.

This game against Louisville was by far the toughest matchup UP will face this year; however the results for the young Pilots may be similar in the future.

The Pilots return home late tonight and next play at Idaho on Friday.