FULLERTON, Calif. – Jessica Palmer only made it a few seconds into the moment of silence before she had to wipe away tears. A teammate beside her couldn’t help it, either, and brought an arm up to her face.

As much as the Cal State Fullerton women’s basketball team tried to return to normalcy Saturday, its first game since the killings of assistant coach Monica Quan and her fiancée, Keith Lawrence, was almost too much to take.

“It was hard, it was really hard,” junior guard Alex Thomas said after a 64-45 loss to UC Riverside. “Harder than I expected it to be. There’s just a lot of emotions that come into it – not being able to look down the line and see her standing up there with us. I know at least for me, it was really difficult ... it was hard not having her with us.”