San Jose State women’s basketball junior point guard Danae Marquez celebrated her 20th birthday Friday by beating Eastern Washington University 84-66 in the Spartans’ first home game of the season.
“Maybe she just felt like giving herself a gift,” head coach Jamie Craighead said.
Marquez led the Spartans (1-1) with 20 points, 3 assists and 1 steal while shooting 6 of 7 from the 3-point line.
“I got to start last year but I’ve taken on this role as a six man and it’s been a challenge in the beginning,” Marquez said. “But I put the team above myself and honestly playing off the bench doesn’t really matter to me.”
At the end of the day, Marquez said she’s there to fight for and with her team and understands it’s all about getting the win.
“She’s always been one of our better shooters, but a year ago we didn’t give her as many looks because she was never off the ball,” Craighead said. “So it’s awesome for her and I’m glad we could get a win on her birthday.”
Marquez benefited from and capitalized on having other shooters around her as well as finding pockets where she got open without being covered to make those important shots.
“Sometimes when you don’t know where she is, she gets open and free and she just can vary shots,” Craighead said.
It showed during the third quarter as the team started to pull ahead, outscoring the Eagles by 9.
While the majority of the third quarter was a back-and-forth affair, a 3-point barrage helped the Spartans stretch that advantage out further. A Marquez triple with just over six minutes remaining in the quarter gave her team a 48-36 lead.
“Marquez is a shooter,” sophomore point guard Ayzhiana Basallo said. Even though Basallo said she felt she didn’t have a great game, she tried her best to help her team as much as possible.
“I was trying to play better defense get my teammates open . . . those little runs help them,” she said.
SJSU completed the game by going 14 of 15 from the line while Eastern Washington only managed 4 free throws on 6 attempts. The Spartans also went 14 of 23 from 3-point territory while holding the Eagles to 10 of 33 from the 3-point line.
“We are starting to get more comfortable within ourselves and playing off of each other,” Marquez said when asked about the team’s offensive output. “We attacked off the ball screen really well and that opened things up for our shooters.”
The team also shot at a 61% clip from the 3-point line and had four players finish the night scoring in double digits: Marquez (20 points), Basallo (15), Fieme’a Hafoka (13) and Tyra Whitehead (10).
The 61% mark from beyond the arc set a record for single-game 3-point field goal percentage in the Craighead era.
Apart from a busy offensive game, the Spartans capitalized on their defense, which forced 18 turnovers and held the Eagles to 37% from the field.
SJSU also managed to contest shots without fouling and had great on-ball pressure throughout most of the game.
“Our defense did a good job of keeping them off the free throw line and not fouling,” Craighead said.
She also said it was a key aspect of the team taking home the win.
“Keeping them off the free throw line was an emphasis and I thought we did a great job,” she said. “I think that proved to be one of the biggest differences in the game.”
Marquez added to that saying the low amount of fouls from SJSU helped push the team in keeping the fast pace of the game, something the team said worked in its favor.
“We’re up tempo team, we have to run them and we weren’t really running at first,” Basallo said.
Once the team found its rhythm in driving, it got in the right place at the right time to make the shots to win the game, something Craighead hopes to continue in the season.
“We have a goal and that’s to win our home games and that’s what you have to do is win the first one to get to the next one,” Craighead said.
But SJSU was not able to pull off the win Tuesday against Santa Clara University as the team lost 89-81 even with Basallo leading the team with 29 points.
The Spartans will look to regain the momentum when they take on UC Santa Barbara on Friday.
