Cal Maritime wins third in a row with 102-68 victory versus Stanton

VALLEJO, Calif. – Cal Maritime opened Tuesday's non-conference game against Stanton, the final opportunity to fine tune things before UC Merced visits PEAC Main Gym on Thursday for each team's first Cal Pac Conference game of the season, by scoring eight of the first 10 combined points, all from Emily Newton, and cruised to a 102-68 victory in the inaugural head-to-head matchup.

This current win streak is the longest in the last nine years of the program's recorded history.

With this result, Cal Maritime improved to 5-8, the most wins in a single season since the 2018-19 campaign (and the Keelhaulers have their entire conference schedule remaining).

Tuesday's event was deemed a forfeit, per Stanton's request, until school officials contacted Cal Maritime with a renewed interest to play. Entering last Friday, these teams were going to play back-to-back games in as many days (January 13 and 14). By reaching an agreement to recognize Monday's game as a forfeit win for CSUM and play Tuesday's game as originally scheduled.

Once action began inside PEAC Main Gym, Cal Maritime decided to use this game as an opportunity to give everyone a solid number of minutes, shake off any rust from the past month — this was only the team's second game played since December 11 — and fine tune everything for the start of Cal Pac play later this week.

Dylan Fulton led all Keelhaulers with a season-high 22 points on 10 of 14 shooting during her 25 minutes on the floor, Aysia Santos scored a career-high 18 points by sinking three of her seven shots from three, Suraya Lloyd recorded 16 points throughout her 14 minutes of action and Newton finished with a career-high 14.

On the opposite end of the court, Cal Maritime forced 39 turnovers and turned those opportunities into 42 points. 

Cal Maritime dominated every category: It won the rebound battle by a 46-29 margin overall, 19-3 on the offensive glass and 27-24 on defense. The Keelhaulers scored more points in the paint compared to the Elks (50-28), off turnovers (42-25) and outscored Stanton's bench, 36-0.

As a team, CSUM shot 50 percent overall versus Stanton's 47 percent overall shooting clip. However, the Keelhaulers took 31 more shots compared to their opponent and connected on 17 more field goal attempts compared to their counterparts.

Thursday's Cal Pac opener against UC Merced will start at 5:30 p.m. inside PEAC Main Gym. Women's basketball will complete a three-game, five-day block of basketball Saturday afternoon when it wraps-up the weekend with a 2 p.m. match up at Simpson — its first conference road game of the season.