Brittany Crain (No. 23) keeps the ball on her side, away from her defender.
Brittany Crain (No. 23) keeps the ball on her side, away from her defender.

In basketball, a team is defined as a group of 10-12 active players, beholding five players on the floor at all times. By that definition, UC Riverside women’s basketball does not qualify. Sure, they have the starting five, but beyond that, only one more player is active in the rotation. In other words, UCR is a team with a roster that can nearly be counted on one hand. Most of their conference counterparts can’t be counted on two.

The reason for this? Chalk it up to either injuries or bad luck, neither of which have been in the Highlanders’ favor this season.

First, it was versatile forward Clemence Lefebvre, who went down with a season-ending knee injury just three games into the regular season. Following that, there was leading senior Annelise Ito, who hurt herself on a layup attempt against CSUN in the eighth game of the conference season. The blow was crushing as the team just barely inched out a seven-point victory over the Matadors, with Ito’s injury weighing heavy on their hearts.

“Annelise is like the glue to the team. She’s one of the captains,” says John Margaritis, “I used to call her the rabbit, the one that sets the pace for everybody. She comes in every practice going 100 miles per hour and plays 100 miles per hour and she hustled herself out of a job, so to speak.” Beyond her intangibles, Ito was UCR’s do-it-all player on the floor and her numbers attest to as much. Before going down, the senior was the team’s third-leading scorer at 13.2 points per game, second in rebounds with 6.9 and led the team in assists with 4.3. Not to mention her incredible efficiency as Ito shot a clip of 50.7 percent from the field and 85 percent from the line — both good for second-highest on the team.

The play in which Ito suffered injury, while heartbreaking, was somewhat a microcosm of the Highlanders’ road to success this season. While she couldn’t stick the landing, Ito instinctually intercepted the Northridge pass, flew down the court and converted an open layup. This — turning turnovers into easy transition buckets — has been the Highlanders’ formula all year and it has allowed them to stay fresh, expending less energy on both ends.

This was on full display last Saturday when UCR clinched their record 17th consecutive victory and capped off their first-ever undefeated conference season with a 69-45 dismantling of CSU Fullerton. In the win, the team forced 22 turnovers and managed an easy 28 points off said mishaps. Though, beyond all else, what stood out most was Margaritis honoring Ito at the start of the game, announcing her as a starter for the final time in her UCR career before replacing her with senior Tahvia Morrison.

The gesture was a testament of Ito’s undeniable worth to this team, on and off the court.

“Look at other people’s rosters and you eliminate someone like Annelise and Clemence,” says Margaritis, “it just becomes an unbelievable story that these (women) have written.” Frankly, he’s right. Not only is the absence of these two talents a massive hurdle for any team to climb, but it puts greater burden on the seven remaining players, limiting their margin for error.

With that burden naturally comes more risk for injury and the Highlanders haven’t been immune to this by any means. “In practice, I asked (guard) Simone (DeCoud) the other day to pick it up and she says ‘Coach, I can’t change direction, my ankle is killing me,’” reveals Margaritis. Decoud went on to knock down four threes for a much-needed 18 points in a home win over second-ranked Hawaii the following game. Decoud was not alone, either, as Margaritis attests that forward Rejane Verin “couldn’t even walk or put her foot on the floor” before she went on to average 22.5 points, 9.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists in two big road wins and earn her third Big West Conference Player of the Week award.

It is this fortuitous mentality which allows players like Decoud to “just play basketball,” as she put it, rather than worry about the team’s string of injuries. It is what allowed for senior Tahvia Morrison to knock down three crucial shots from deep in her final career regular season game on Saturday and it is what has kept this team steady along their unprecedented and truly unbelievable run.

What has made UCR women’s basketball’s season so amazing is their ability to play as a unit and this is something that they have benefited from in the wake of their handicapped roster.

“If this thing goes undefeated the next two games, it’s not even a movie. It’s not even a fairytale,” Margaritis told me before the team’s final two contests of the season. Yet, as the team has so often done this year, the team got it done and now, with a potential NCAA tournament berth in their sights, UCR women’s basketball will continue to write their own script.