San Diego ? For the first time in two years, Kansas University’s women’s basketball team has a three-game winning streak.

The Jayhawks, who won only five games last year, defeated San Diego 59-56 on Saturday night and improved to 3-0. It’s the first time Kansas has won three straight since defeating Louisiana-Monroe, Illinois and Eastern Illinois between Nov. 26 and Dec. 1, 2001. In the 53 games that followed during that season and last season, KU won consecutive games only once.

Things appear to be different this year with a team loaded with underclassmen.

“I think it’s absolutely super,” said KU coach Marian Washington, whose team opened the season with victories against Texas-El Paso and Cal State-Fullerton. “This group came in here wanting to make a difference for our program.”

The newcomers did just that Saturday. Freshman center Tamara Ransburg had 15 points and 15 rebounds, and sophomore transfer Aquanita Burras also was in double figures with a team-high 16 points.

KU trailed 29-27 at halftime Saturday before opening a 10-point lead in the second half.

San Diego (2-1) rallied and tied the game at 48 with a little more than six minutes remaining.

Burras, freshman forward Crystal Kemp and sophomore forward Blair Waltz all played with four fouls down the stretch.

The score was tied at 56 when Burras scored her first points of the second half on a stickback with 1:25 remaining. KU outrebounded San Diego 51-37.

Ransburg came up with three of her 15 rebounds in the final minute and also made a free throw to provide the three-point margin.

In addition to her double-double, Ransburg had six of KU’s 13 blocked shots.

“She gave us something inside,” Washington said. “You can’t say enough about her ability to block shots, especially at critical times.”

Kemp added nine points, eight rebounds and two blocks for KU, which held San Diego to 31.1 percent shooting (23-of-74). Kansas made 46 percent (23-of-50) of its field-goal attempts but made only 12-of-28 free-throw attempts and turned the ball over 21 times.

“I’m very happy about this, but we still have a lot of work to do,” Washington said. “They made a lot of mistakes, but they showed a lot of heart and determination.”

Forward Erin Mallich led San Diego with 18 points, and center Marta Menuez finished with 13 points and 11 rebounds.

Kansas will try to extend its winning streak to four games at 7:05 p.m. Friday when it plays host to Texas Southern in the first round of the KU Classic. The Jayhawks haven’t won four in a row since the 1999-2000 season when they had a pair of five-game winning streaks.