Cal Poly women’s basketball seniors ready for regular season home finale

Beth Balbierz and Lisa Marie Sanchez took two very different paths on the way to becoming the starting backcourt for the Cal Poly women’s basketball team.

The two senior guards — along with reserves Paige Brown, Heather Madrigal and Lindsey Wolf — will play the final home game of their careers at 2 p.m. Saturday when the Mustangs host rival UC Santa Barbara.

For Balbierz, a former walk-on from Folsom who spent her first year on campus playing pickup games at the Cal Poly Recreation Center, celebrating senior day has been five long years in the making. The sharp-shooting 3-point specialist has 143 made 3-pointers in 114 career games, and has provided this year’s team with a much-needed offensive spark.

Balbierz made three 3-pointers and scored 14 points in the Mustangs’ 61-56 setback against Long Beach State in a Big West Conference matchup Wednesday night.

The 5-foot-9 left-hander has made 62 3-pointers this season, the second-highest total in the conference behind UC Riverside’s Brittany Crain (70).

“She’s really come a long way as a basketball player,” 19th-year head coach Faith Mimnaugh said. “She’s been an incredible worker.”

A starter in all 27 games this season, Balbierz is averaging a career-high 12.9 points per contest and leads the team in steals (45) and made free throws (69). She has five 20-point scoring performances to her credit this season, including three straight games with at least 20 points prior to Wednesday’s loss against the 49ers.

Balbierz’s strong play earned her a scholarship after redshirting in 2011-12, but she still identifies with the walk-on mentality. Madrigal and Wolf are both walk-ons from Arroyo Grande High, and Brown joined the team as a walk-on following her standout prep career at Sierra High in Shaver Lake.

“It’s just kind of cool to see how it all progressed,” Balbierz said, “and where we’re at now compared to where we were.”

Sanchez, a 5-3 point guard, had to climb through the junior college ranks before making her presence felt at Cal Poly.

After graduating from Bakersfield’s Centennial High, Sanchez spent two seasons playing for Ventura College and helped lead the Pirates to a state championship as a sophomore. She earned first-team All-American honors and was named the co-California Community College Athletics Association Player of the Year in 2013-14.

In averaging nearly 17 points and eight assists per game, Sanchez caught the attention of Mimnaugh and the Mustang coaching staff. She finished her two-year career at Ventura owning the school records for assists in a game (17), season (269) and career (447).

“She really had so many tools that I thought we absolutely had to have,” Mimnaugh said.

Sanchez spent most of last season backing up then-senior Ariana Elegado, and shot a team-leading 66.7 percent from behind the 3-point line in her limited action. Now a full-time starter, Sanchez is averaging 9.0 points and 4.2 assists per contest.

Her 41 made 3-pointers rank eighth among Big West competitors this season.

“It’s been a long road,” Sanchez said following the loss to Long Beach State. “It’s bittersweet. But I wouldn’t want to end it with any other team despite the season that we’ve had, despite the game that we just we had.

“We’re super close, we’re super tight and that’s the thing that I’ll miss the most.”

The season is far from over for Cal Poly, which at 13-14 overall and 6-8 in the Big West is still trying to improve its seeding going into the Big West Conference Tournament in two weeks.

While Mimnaugh said Balbierz and Sanchez have been strong in their roles as leaders on and off the court, she was quick to praise the consistent effort of players like Brown, Madrigal and Wolf that often gets overlooked.

“That kind of dedication doesn’t go unnoticed,” Mimnaugh said. “It’s harder, in some ways, to get your butt up at 6 o’clock in the morning and know that you’re probably not going to get any time, or just a little sniff on the court.

“I really tip my hat to those players that are willing to dedicate themselves to the team and truly everything they’re about is about the team.”

This story was originally published February 25, 2016 at 12:11 PM with the headline "Cal Poly women’s basketball seniors ready for regular season home finale."