Women’s Basketball Starts Strong in First Scrimmage

Because of limited numbers, the women’s team was not able to have any inner-squad scrimmages. The first scheduled scrimmage was yesterday against Umpqua Community College. It was the first day we were really able to play a ‘game’ and it felt really good!

Up until this point we only had nine players at practice every day, just one short of 5-on-5. Three of our teammates play soccer, so they were busy having an outstanding season and going to regionals. One new player, Lexi Newman, tore her Anterior Cruciate Ligament during one of the first weeks of practice and had surgery this past Tuesday. She is on her way to recovery and plans to be back with the team as soon as she is able.

As a player, the scrimmage seemed like a very successful start to the season. I think it gave us a lot of confidence and reassurance. We’ve been working very hard up until this point, working on defense and putting in offenses. Although we did not run a lot of our offenses, we ran our primary ones very well. We are transforming this year into a running team, and the scrimmage showed great improvement. We ran well and got many lay-ups.

Our defense looked good, especially for our first time running it against an offense we were not familiar with. We need to increase our communication by a significant amount and we also need to get to our spots faster. We need to ‘jump to the ball’ and ‘bump the cutter’ better so the other team doesn’t get too many easy looks at the basket. We forced MANY turnovers and out-rebounded UCC on both ends.

We shot the ball extremely well, shooting over 60 percent from the 3-point line and 50 percent overall from the field. We shot 70 percent from the free-throw line, which was our goal this season, but it could still be improved. Overall, it was a great start and we all look forward to next weekend where we open our season against Bethany College at noon on Friday.