Valerie Higgins was seeing double again, and it gave the Pacific Tigers a great view into the next round of the West Coast Conference Tournament.
Higgins came up with her conference-best 13th double-double of the season, scoring 18 points and adding 14 rebounds as Pacific handled Santa Clara 76-60 on Friday at the WCC Tournament at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas. The No. 6 Tigers (18-11) play No. 3 Pepperdine in the quarterfinals at 3 p.m. today.
It wasn’t a surprising performance by Higgins, a 6-foot-1 sophomore guard from Granada Hills. And it was crucial in a game in which some of the starters got into early foul trouble and she had to log 38 minutes.