ASHLAND – Of greater importance to the No. 17 Southern Oregon University women's basketball team than its climb in the NAIA rankings is the need to stay sharp Saturday at California Maritime.

The 7 p.m. game in Vallejo, Calif., will be the third between the Raiders (11-1 overall) and Keelhaulers (6-5) this season. SOU won the first two, 99-80 in Ashland and 88-66 in Klamath Falls, back in November.

Both of those outcomes were on par with what the Raiders have done to achieve the seventh-best scoring average in the NAIA at 88.8 points per game. More of the same would be ideal for SOU in its only game before next weekend's visits to Eastern Oregon and College of Idaho, which finished 1-2 in the CCC standings last season.

The Keelhaulers have won three of four since their last loss to SOU, including a 63-59 overtime victory against Corban. Javier Brantley leads them at 15.4 points per game with 26 3-pointers made, while Shante Sands averages 11.3 points, 4.5 rebounds and 3.2 assists.


Some notes on SOU:

• The Raiders' 117 points in last Friday's win against Concordia were the third-most in school history and the second-most ever recorded in a Cascade Conference game. The Raiders did it by going 44-for-80 from the field and 10-for-22 from the 3-point line behind a career night from Autumn Durand (Onalaska, Wash./Onalaska), who scored 25 points. The freshman wing led the Raiders all weekend, averaging 19.5 points and 8.5 rebounds, and has been in double figures in all but three games.

• Ashley Claussen (Scotts Valley, Calif./Santa Cruz) and Bree Park (Bellingham, Wash./Meridian) were welcome additions back into the rotation in their returns from injury last week. Claussen, who missed four games, posted 12.5 points, 6.5 assists and 3.5 rebounds per night. Park, who was out six games, came off the bench to go 6-for-12 from behind the 3-point line with 10 points per night. This season, 32 of Park's 40 attempts from the field have been from 3-point range.

• Speaking of the bench, as a whole, it is contributing 37.3 points per game over the last four. Not coincidentally, 11 different Raiders are chipping in at least four points per game for the season. SOU has put at least four players in double figures in all but one game.

• The Raiders are still second in the country in rebounds per game at 50.7, paced by Carly Meister (Elma, Wash./Elma) (8.3), Kristen Schoenherr (Rainier, Wash./Rainier) (5.4), Claussen (5.5) and Brenna Anderson (Burlington, Wash./Burlington-Edison) (5.3). Meister and Schoenherr also lead the team in scoring at averages of 14.3 and 14.2 points, but SOU didn't need anything out of the ordinary from them to blow out its first two conference opponents as they combined to score 20 points per night.