On her way to breaking not one, not two, but three women's basketball records a few weeks ago, Asher Cai might have gotten there a little bit sooner …
 
… except that points scored in a practice game don't count.
 
"She had 31 in a scrimmage at Whitman," Central Washington coach Randi Richardson recalled of Cai's first-ever college competition back in 2022. "I saw her take one shot and I'm like, 'OK, this is someone who's going to help us right now.'
 
"We knew her capabilities. But it's another thing to see her go out there and play. She's a competitor and she wants to just go out and play and win."
 
Ever since that quick autumn trip from Ellensburg to Walla Walla, Cai has kept competing … kept piling up the points … and kept winning.
 
Now, after a particularly productive period in January when she rewrote three records in a span of a dozen days --  the Great Northwest Athletic Conference mark for 3-pointers, the Central career scoring record and finally the GNAC career scoring record – Cai and the Wildcats are gearing up for the postseason.
 
Ranked No. 23 nationally and No. 1 in the West Region, Central will be the No. 2 seed for this week's GNAC Tournament at Western Washington University in Bellingham. They have a bye into Friday's semifinals, where they will await the winner of Thursday's first-round contest between No. 3 Northwest Nazarene and No. 6 Montana State Billings.
 
Tip-off in Carver Gymnasium is at noon.
 
At 23-5 overall, 14-4 in GNAC play, Central was atop the standings for most of the season, going 9-0 through the first half of the conference schedule. The second half of the docket has been a bit bumpier, but Cai said that's not necessarily a negative thing.
 
"I'm feeling really good about it," said Cai, who hit her GNAC record 259^th trey on Jan. 17 at Montana State Billings, scored her Central record 1,961^st point on Jan. 22 at home against Saint Martin's, and eclipsed the GNAC points record with her 2,002^nd on Jan. 29 at home against Alaska Anchorage. "It hasn't been a perfect season, but I feel like these highs and lows are what we need coming into tournament play.
 
"We all care so much about winning and doing it for each other and having each other's backs," she added. "We want it more."
 
FOUR SPORTS, ONE PASSION
If you're an athlete at Colfax High School, from the town of the same name, about 165 miles straight east from Ellensburg, chances are you're not doing just one sport. With an enrollment of about 125 and an athletics program that includes 14 sports teams (seven for girls, seven for boys), crossing over from one sport to another is essential to filling those roster spots.
 
Asher Cai did exactly that. She played volleyball in the fall, then bounced over to basketball in the winter before turning out for track in the spring, running on relays as well as doing high jump and pole vault. (She also previously played soccer.)
 
But while older sister Scout became an All-American track star at Seattle Pacific, basketball was Asher's passion – and Central Washington was her ultimate destination.
 
"I looked at a couple other schools – it took me awhile to figure out where I wanted to go," she said. "Then it just hit me one night."
 
As is the case across the entire college sports spectrum, coaches don't always know for sure what they're going to get from their newcomers until they actually see them in action. But Richardson's coaching instincts told her that she had something special in Cai.
 
"Asher loves basketball. It's a priority in her life, she's a very hard worker – and she's a high achiever in the classroom," Richardson said. (Cai has a 3.89 grade-point average as an exercise science major and recently was named to the GNAC All-Academic team for the third time.) We look at that (her academics) because that translates onto the floor. You can't turn that on and off – it's who you are."
 
Richardson pointed out one other factor that doesn't have its own column in the box score.
 
"Asher has a great feel for the game," she said. "She has always had her ability, but she has that basketball feel, and that's something that you can't teach."
 
INSTANT IMPACT
While those 31 points she got in that scrimmage at Whitman didn't count for anything, Cai needed hardly any time at all to come up with a performance that did count.
 
In her official college debut on Nov. 11, 2022 at the season-opening Northwest Nazarene Classic in Nampa, Idaho, she was in the starting lineup. She played 34 minutes, delivering 16 points on 5-of-10 shooting, plus five rebounds, an assist, a blocked shot, and a steal in an 84-63 romp past Cal State East Bay – a team that was receiving votes in the national preseason poll.
 
Just 24 hours later, Cai had 24 points on 9-of-15 from the floor (6 of 11 downtown) plus six boards as Central stomped on Stanislaus State, 86-62.
 
By the end of that season, she had pumped in 420 points (double-digits in 23 of her 30 games; 20-plus points in six games) for a 14.0 average and collected an average of 5.5 rebounds per game
 
At season's end, Cai earned the first in what would become an ever-expanding collection of awards when she was named GNAC Freshman of the Year. She also earned a spot on the All-GNAC honorable mention list. The Wildcats went 23-9 overall and reached the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
 
"I always knew what she was capable of. None of it surprised me," Richardson said.
 
THAT WAS SOME KIND OF JANUARY
Nor did it surprise Richardson – or anyone else – when Cai kept stepping up game.
 
In the final contest of her sophomore season – a GNAC Tournament semifinal against Montana State Billings --  she scored her 1,000^th career point, needing just 61 games over her first two years to get there. Among her honors during that 2023-24 season was an NCAA Division II national Player of the Week award after back-to-back double-doubles against Simon Fraser (29 points, 12 rebounds and Western Washington (20 plus 10).
 
Last year, she broke then-teammate Sunny Huerta's school record for 3-pointers made when she drained her 202^nd in a late-season game against Saint Martin's. (The two of them actually came into that game tied at 201; once Cai went ahead, she stayed ahead, hitting 13 more after that while Huerta hit 10 more.) She was All-GNAC and All-West Region.
 
Then came January with those three records – GNAC 3-pointers, Central scoring, and GNAC scoring – all between Jan. 17 and 29.
 
All of them were significant, but the conference scoring record was definitely a biggie. The previous standard was 2,001 points set by Alisa Breen of Montana State Billings from 2013-18. (Breen missed one season with a knee injury.)
 
"It's amazing because I was here to see Breen play," Richrdson said of her time as an assistant coach at Seattle Pacific and then as an assistant and head coach at Central. "I remember some of that and what kind of player she was. To have a player like that in our program is great."
 
With Central hosting Alaska Anchorage in Nicholson Arena on Jan. 29, Cai took the court for the opening tip-off with 1,983 career points. She needed 17 to become just the second 2,000-point scorer in GNAC history, 18 to tie Breen's record and 19 to break it.
 
She reached 2,000 on a pair of free throws with 4:38 remaining in the third quarter. Then with 6:31 left in the game, Cai had the ball near the top of the key. She went to her right, lost her defender, went behind her own back with the ball while stepping to her left and sank a jumper from the left side of the foul line to put her at 2,002.
 
In the immediate aftermath, Cai had no idea she had just broken it.
 
"I didn't know how close I was just because I asked Randi not to tell me," Cai said. "I'd rather just play and keep it in mind.
 
"I heard them announce it and that's when I was like, 'Oh.'"
 
Cai would have liked to be able to enjoy the moment a little more, but Anchorage took some of the shine off it by coming back In the fourth quarter to win the game, 60-50.
 
"It's something I feel like I still haven't thought about too much," Cai said, "just because we're in the midst of the season and winning is No.1. It really still hasn't sunk in because I'm kind of focused on other things right now."
 
Richardson has thought about it and has her own perspective.
 
"Asher is always an amazing talent. But it's not an easy thing in our league with so many coaches game-planning and scouting for her," she added. "To have her step up and be committed to growth and elevate the team's success over the last four years has been amazing for me, as well."
 
SHARING THE BALL IN A BIG WAY
Amid all the points Cai is putting onto the scoreboard, it would be easy to overlook all of the points she's putting into her teammates' hands.
 
Cai just wrapped up the GNAC assists title for the first time, logging 125 for an average of 4.5 per game. She had a career high of nine against Humboldt in the second game of the season. Since then, she has had two games with eight helpers, two with seven, and two with six.
 
One of the eight-assist games came on the night she scored a career-high 37 points against the University of Mary. When she matched that 37-pointer on Feb. 12 at home against Montana State Billings, Cai dished out six.
 
"I have teammates who can shoot the ball, and I trust them with the ball in their hands," Cai said. "Through the players I've played with and through Randi's coaching as well, I feel like I've developed into a different player.
 
"My freshman year I was more of a shooter playing with Sam (Bowman, whose CWU single-season record 665 points in 2022-23 is within reach, as Cai enters the GNACs with 648). And I was more of a shooter in high school. Now, I've developed into a playmaker."
 
Whether looking for her own shot or looking for a teammate, Cai knows the spotlight will be on her come crunch time. She credits Richardson with guiding her toward becoming better able to handle those situations.
 
"She has helped me in being a lot more composed in pressure moments, just mentally knowing where I'm at," Cai said. "I can get pretty hyper-focused on some things, and she has helped me realize the bigger things – the mental piece of it and obviously skill-wise, as well."
 
Naturally, Cai wants her final season at Central to go as deep into March as possible. But even after her Wildcats jersey comes off for the final time, she's definitely not ready to be done with basketball.
 
"I hope to play overseas, but I haven't really looked into it too much," she said. "That's a worry for after the season. I'd like to play in Australia or New Zealand."
 
For Richardson, Cai could becomes her fourth GNAC Player of the Year in the past five seasons, joining Kassidy Malcolm (2022), Bowman (2024) and Huerta (2025).
 
"As a coach, it's fun to get players who are so wanting to improve and develop themselves and grow and be challenged," she said. "It gives back to you – that's what this job is. To see Asher come in as a freshman and knowing what her capabilities are and see her go out and achieve that is amazing."
 
In fact, she has been achieving for the Wildcats since way back during that scrimmage in Walla Walla, when the points she scored didn't count …
 
… but the potential she showed counted for plenty.