Final Stats

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LOS ANGELES â€" The Loyola Marymount women's basketball team jumped to fifth place in the final West Coast Conference standing thanks to a 75-64 win over Pacific on Saturday. The LMU victory paired with Santa Clara's loss to Saint Mary's means that the Lions will open the conference tournament against San Francisco on Thursday at 8 p.m.

"We knew it was going to be tough," said Head Coach Charity Elliott. "Pacific always plays hard. I am just really happy for our seniors. Our team was really committed to sending them off with a win."

All three seniors started the game for the Lions. Shelbi Aimonetti hit a three with 4:33 remaining in the first quarter to put the Lions up four, 11-7. The senior played a season-high 27 minutes in her final home game.

LMU held a five-point advantage after the first period as Jackie Johnson's layup with nine seconds left in the period made it 22-17.

Cierra Belvin scored the first basket of the second quarter to push the lead to seven. Belvin scored a career-high 11 points, including a field goal in each quarter for the first time. The freshman also tied her career-best with three assists.

Pacific hung tough, and cut the LMU lead to just one, 36-35, going into the half. The back-and-forth action continued in the third quarter, as half of the game's 12 lead changes happened in that period.

The Lions found an answer in the fourth, and benefited from a 9-2 run to push the game to eight points with 4:51 to play. LMU eventually grew the lead to 11 thanks to a pair of drives from Belvin and Andee Velasco that resulted in layups as the shot clock was winding down.

"You saw different people step up," said Elliott. "You saw Cierra Belvin have an incredible game today. I thought Raychel Stanley gave us incredible minutes. Cheyanne Wallace grabbed some big, huge rebounds down the stretch. Our underclassmen stepped up and filled the gap to make it happen today. I'm just really happy for our seniors. We're not done, and I'm ready to head to Vegas."

LMU played through foul trouble, with three Lions reaching four fouls with over six minutes remaining in the game, but managed to keep them all from fouling out.

Pacific shot just 2-for-19 from three, but did finish with three players in double-figures. LMU allowed just seven assists, the low for the year.

Johnson led all scorers with 19 points. Fellow senior Leslie Lopez-Wood added 12 of her own and finished 2-for-3 from long range.

This was LMU's third highest point total this season. The 28 made field goals ties the season-high set in the home win versus Saint Mary's on Feb. 16.

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