Excitement filled the air in The Pavilion at Santa Monica College Saturday night, January 3rd, with the Lady Corsairs Basketball team's impressive victory over the visiting Long Beach City College Vikings.

The Lady Corsairs took the lead early in the game and never looked back even though several times during the game the visiting Vikings narrowed the lead to only four points. In the end, however, the Corsairs proved to be too much for Long Beach with their 24 point margin win.

“ This is our 2nd consecutive win and we are building on that,” said Head Coach Lydia Strong. The coach felt that the team fouled a lot in the first half, but then came together in the second half.

“ We are the defending champs of the conference so we need to step it up. We want to be conference chaps again. The key to the game was “defense … and Ray-Ray, Rayshandra Ray; she never stops: she's like a motor. We start out with our defense and then we pull the offense of the bench,” said the head coach.

Freshman, Rayshandra Ray was on fire this night. She lead the team in points and rebounds. “We got back on defense. We brought heart, desire, and pride with us to the game tonight and we had a good game,” said Ray.

The Lady Corsairs' next game is on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at Los Angeles Valley College in Valley Glen at 7:00 pm. Los Angeles Valley College is located at 5800 Fulton Avenue Valley Glen, Calif., 91401.

The Corsair's complete basketball schedule is on the SMC website at http://www.smc.edu/womens_basketball/schedule.htm