DALLAS (AP) Marta Suárez made three 3-pointers and finished with 19 points on 8-of-12 shooting, Kayla Williams scored 17 points and No. 20 California beat SMU 81-66 Sunday night.
Williams made 7 of 11 from the field, 3 of 4 from 3-point range and had seven assists. Lulu Twidale added 13 points and Ioanna Krimili 10 for Cal (14-2, 2-1 ACC).
The Golden Bears finished with 10+ 3-pointers for the eighth game this season.
Twidale made a layup and the and-1 free throw and followed with a layup and a 3-pointer before Gabrielle Abigor made a layup to cap and 10-0 and give Cal a 17-12 lead with 1:59 left in the first quarter. Ella Brow hit a 3-pointer to open the second quarter and her basket in the lane 45 seconds later made it 19-all but the Bears scored the next 12 points to take the lead for good.
Williams hit two of Cal's three 3-pointers in an 11-2 spurt that made it 53-40 about 4 minutes into the third quarter and the Mustangs trailed by at least nine points the rest of the way.
Nya Robertson scored 13 of her 22 points in the fourth quarter for SMU (9-6, 1-2). Chantae Embry added 12 points and Ella Brow 10.
The Mustangs had their four-game win streak snapped. SMU - along with Cal, in its first season in the conference - earned its first-ever ACC victory last time out, defeating Stanford 67-63 on Thursday.
“I’m just really excited that we could bounce back after a tough one on Thursday [against Clemson] and play well enough to get a win today against SMU,” Cal head coach Charmin Smith said. “I know they had a big win over Stanford, and had a lot of momentum coming in. I'm proud of how we responded on the road, and road wins and conference play are huge. So I’m really happy for our team. I thought our defensive intensity was pretty solid. We made five threes in the third quarter, and that three ball, it really can be a separator. Particularly, for us if we're getting stops and we're getting three on the other end, it's really hard for teams to keep up. It allowed us to survive some foul trouble that we were in.”
UP NEXT
Cal returns home to take on No. 22 NC State at Haas Pavilion on Thursday at 7 p.m. PST.
Such a relief, in more ways than one. I took BearBloke to Alta Bates's E.R. this morning after he woke up with nasty symptoms of internal distress (he had to undergo lots of tests, but will live to visit Haas this week). One procedure started at 3 o'clock; as the blood transfusion worked its magic, he had me recount the on-line play-by-play of Cal's win over SMU. This is devotion, huh? And cheered him up like nothing else.
"Don't get distracted, myself. Don't get distracted." Self-talk from a young relative
Such a relief, in more ways than one. I took BearBloke to Alta Bates's E.R. this morning after he woke up with nasty symptoms of internal distress (he had to undergo lots of tests, but will live to visit Haas this week). One procedure started at 3 o'clock; as the blood transfusion worked its magic, he had me recount the on-line play-by-play of Cal's win over SMU. This is devotion, huh? And cheered him up like nothing else.
glad to hear BearBloke is on the mend. It takes a lot for a true blue to not care about a Cal sport they love.
Today's game looked like a top 25 team beating a conference opponent on the road ... meaning it was a competitive game but the end result looked like a safe conclusion from early... It looked like Cal out classed SMU even when the score was close.
