Irvine Valley's women's basketball team struggled for a while, but the Lasers found their game in the second half and rolled to a to a 97-54 victory over Golden West in an Orange Empire Conference opening game Wednesday night at home.
IVC finished the game on a 48-7 run.
The Lasers, ranked No. 9 in the state, led just 15-12, after the first quarter and, 41-34, at halftime.
And Golden West pulled within two points at 49-47 on a layup by Abigail Guerrero with 3:17 left in the third quarter.
But IVC then went on a 15-1 run to close out the quarter and took a 62-48 advantage into the final period.
It was all Lasers from there. Irvine Valley led, 70-52 with 7:21 to go and closed the game on a 27-2 spurt to improve its record to 13-2 overall.
After shooting just 35.9 percent (14 of 39) from the field in the first half, Irvine Valley went 21 of 42 (50.0 percent) in the second half.
Sophomore standout guard Anai Washington was the leader of the second-half surge for IVC.
She finished with 21 points in the second half and ended up with a game-high 27 points, 13 rebounds and seven assists.
IVC had four players in all score in double figures. Freshman guard Morgan Higgins contributed 20 points, five rebounds, six assists and four steals, freshman forward Helen Reynolds had 15 points and eight rebounds and freshman guard Samantha Uehara chipped in 10 points, five rebounds and four assists for IVC. Freshman guard Jessica Suruor ended with seven points, four rebounds and three assists and freshman guard Katie Nguyen added seven rebounds and five assists.
Golden West, which ended up shooting 30.3 percent (20 of 66) for the game, was paced by Guerrero, who had a team-high 25 points. She scored 19 of those points in the first half to keep the Rustlers in the game. Guerrero also had six rebounds and three steals. She was the only player in double figures in scoring for Golden West, which saw its record slip to 3-10 overall.
Irvine Valley plays again on Friday at Saddleback at 5 p.m.
