CLAREMONT -- The Cal Lutheran women's basketball team received an object lesson on the dangers of losing concentration Saturday evening.
Since the Regals still won, it came cheaply enough.
CLU led 14-0 and 19-3, but allowed Pomona-Pitzer to hang around, needing a late 12-0 run to secure a 66-51 and retain a share of second place in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
CLU is 18-5, 10-2 in the SCIAC with two games remaining. The Regals have already secured a place in the conference's four-team tournament, but kept alive their slim hopes of taking first and securing home-court advantage. Occidental is a game ahead of CLU, but since the Tigers swept the Regals, holds the advantage if the teams were to tie.
Pomona-Pitzer, which lost the earlier meeting 87-49, is 5-16, 1-11.
It was something of a trap game, with CLU coming off a loss in Thursday's first-place showdown at Occidental and facing the ninth-place team in the conference.
"The big challenge," said CLU coach Roy Dow, "was after that tough emotional game, how to come back 48 hours later, get back on the bus and go on another road trip. That's where we missed Kelsey Paopao (CLU's only senior, who has missed the season because of injury), an older kid that's been around. ... You could see it today."
The Regals overcame that challenge at the start -- holding Pomona-Pitzer scoreless for its first 11 possessions and almost eight minutes -- but after that, it was a struggle.
"I know a lot of us wanted to come out strong because obviously, we lost to Occidental," said Donielle Griggs, who led CLU with 23 points, "so we had it in us to take our anger out, I guess you could say, for the next game. But it was hard to stay focused."
Said Dow, "We did (respond) for 10 minutes. But ... teams aren't just going to roll over when you come to their gym the second time around."
With the help of Anja Hughes-Stinson's big game off the bench, Pomona trailed just 51-45 with 6:20 remaining before the Regals put together the 12-0 run that gave them an 18-point advantage with 3:15 left. That proved to be enough of a cushion.
"We stuck with it," said Griggs, who hit five 3-pointers. "Never give up. That's been our motto all year."
Starla Wright added 12 points and seven rebounds for CLU, and Brianna Parker grabbed 15 rebounds. Hughes-Stinson led Pomona with 23 points, including all four of her team's 3-point shots.
CLU did not practice Thursday -- which Dow considered a partial explanation for his team's occasionally sloppy play -- and will take two more days off before returning to practice Tuesday.
"It's that time of the season," he said. "We're freshmen and sophomores, and the bodies show it."