During Saturday’s Red-White scrimmage, the women’s basketball team showed flashes of brilliance their fans can look forward to seeing more of in the upcoming season.
After warming up with some fast-paced drills, the women took the court and appeared slightly sluggish out of the gate with multiple turnovers and missed shots.
The three juniors on the team supplied much of the excitement and showcased their many talents.
Junior guard Meka Werts provided much of the action scoring a game-high nine points along with four rebounds. She also provided a spark on defense coming up with a steal, and then taking it back down the court for two.
Another player who is able to provide shutdown defense is Sabra Wrice, a fellow junior guard. She scored only three points, but racked up six rebounds in the intra-squad match up.
Last year she led the MAAC with her 47 steals and was fifth in scoring averaging 15.7 points per game.
Baendu Lowenthal, a forward and the final junior on the team, tied Werts for the lead with nine points and added three rebounds as well.
Outside of a few stretches of quality play, however, the team looked like it needed some work before it would be ready to compete. The Stags have slightly less than one month to work all the kinks out of their game.
Despite the sloppy play, Head Coach Diane Nolan was confident in her team, noting that turnovers are not fixed in one day and that working every day in practice should fix the problem.
“By November 11th, we’ll have it cleaned up a lot,” Coach Nolan remarked in reference to the women’s opening date against Richmond.
With her top four scorers returning, Coach Nolan said that they should be improved with the players finding their shots in the more up-tempo attack.
Along with this solid core of players returning, Coach Nolan also added five freshmen in this year’s class. They add some size to the frontcourt with Erin Sheehan, Kendra Hussey, Stephanie Greehan, and Tara Flaherty all listed as over six feet. The final recruit is guard Jill Piacquadio, who adds some additional depth to the backcourt.
With the addition of a solid freshman class and an already solid core of players, all that is left to do is work on playing as a team with the fundamentals. If they are able to cut down on the turnovers, they should be able to turn the program around after a down season last year.
Freshman center/forward Tara Flaherty, who brought down three rebounds in the game, had a bright outlook on this season, claiming that the team would sneak up on a lot of people and “pounce on everyone”.
By November 11th, Coach Nolan should have the team ready to do just that.
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