The UC Riverside women’s basketball team caught a break when UC Davis center Megan Norris went to the bench with two fouls early in the first quarter of their Big West Tournament quarterfinal on Thursday afternoon. The seventh-seeded Highlanders immediately took advantage, surging to an eight-poi nt lead in the opening minutes, but they couldn’t keep themselves up – or the Aggies down – for long. UCD turned to its other star, Tova Sabel, and she put the third-seeded Aggies on her back long enough for Norris to return and help dominate the second half in a 61-50 victory at Lee’s Family Forum in Henderson, Nevada. UC Davis advances to face No. 2 seed UC Irvine (21-9) in a semifinal on Friday at 2:30 p.m. Top-seeded Hawaii (22-8) will face fourth-seeded UC San Diego (18-15) in the first semifinal at noon. Riverside was coming off a 54-40 victory over Long Beach State in the first round on Wednesday, while Davis was playing its first game of the eight-team tournament. “We just ran out of gas,” UCR coach Brad Langston said. “That’s the tough part of playing back-to-back games, but they came out executed the game plan, got the looks that we wanted, they just didn’t fall.” Sabel, a 5-foot-11 guard from Sweden who was voted to the All-Big West first team earlier this week, finished with 20 points and six rebounds. Norris, a 6-3 junior from Menlo Park who made the second team, posted 15 points, six rebounds and four blocked shots after playing a little more than three minutes in the first half. “She was fresh,” Aggies coach Jennifer Gross said of Norris’ second half. “I thought she had a real aggressive mentality to start the second half.” Hannah Wickstrom scored 13 points off the bench and Makayla Rose was the lone starter in double figures with 12 points for UCR (17-15), which shot 32% from the field and was outscored 24-6 from 3-point range. UC Davis, which shot 43% overall, took its first lead at 17-14 on a 3-pointer by Victoria Baker with 8:56 left in the first half, and the Aggies never trailed again. “It wasn’t an ideal start for sure, but we always talk about how our defense can get us going on the offensive end as well,” Sabel said. “We found our flow and the chemistry.” UCD took a 27-21 advantage into halftime and continued to hold off the Highlanders, who twice cut the deficit to three points in the third quarter, but couldn’t get any closer. UCR cut the lead to three a final time on a layup by Wickstrom 23 seconds into the fourth quarter, but Sabel followed with back-to-back jumpers to spark a 6-0 run. Seneca Hackley made her first basket for UCR after missing her first eight field-goal attempts to cut the lead to 49-43 with 6:42 remaining, but a 3-pointer from in front of the Davis bench by Bria Shine with 5:41 remaining put the Aggies back up by nine and the Highlanders never got closer than seven the rest of the way. “We just had a tough second quarter, but they responded in the third, responded in the fourth, so really just proud of their fight and how far they’ve come,” Langston said. Riverside and Davis split their two regular-season meetings with the Highlanders winning the most recent matchup, 55-53, on Feb. 13 in Riverside. Hackley had a season-high 20 points in that win, shooting 7 for 12 from the floor, but she struggled in the rematch, finishing 1 for 10 with two points. UCR surged to a 12-4 lead before Sabel scored her first points on a layup. She then hit two 3-pointers in a 7-0 run that tied it at 14-all entering the second quarter. “Tova hitting a couple big shots early was huge for us,” Gross said. After the Aggies took their first lead on the 3-pointer by Baker, they extended the advantage to 25-15 before UCR cut the deficit to six at the half. “Bringing in eight new players is really, really difficult, but watching them grow has been huge,” Langston said. “So, having an offseason will be great to be able to put that continuity together and bring it back next year.” ...read more read less