Women Face Dissapointing Loss Followed by Slight Win

Despite our nine-point half time lead, the first period against Evergreen State was completely dissatisfying. The way we were playing defense and the way were shooting the ball made it feel like we should have been up by a lot more.

Our tough defense held the Geoducks to just 17 first-half points, holding them to under 30% shooting from both the field and three point line. Who knew the second half was going to be even more disappointing?! Losing by five to a team that has never beat Oregon Tech since the women’s program was brought back is as low as they come.

I must say, Evergreen has been playing very well lately—they just couldn’t come away with a win. They finally did Friday night against us. It’s not fun being the team they finally beat, but it happens. What is weird is that if you look at the stats they are almost completely identical (just like the men’s), except the rebounds. They had nine more total rebounds than us, and I think that is what cost us the game. In a game like that rebounds are extremely important, and they beat us 21-32 on the boards. They had six more offensive boards, which are the critical ones to get in a tight game. Six offensive boards probably gave them 6 more points which gave them the win. It was tough losing to a team that we beat by 20 in the first round of conference play.

Waiting for coaches to come in and give us the post-game talk was the longest wait ever. Everyone was mad, or sad and nobody was talking to one another. On top of that, the coaches took a lot longer than they usually do so we were all sitting there in silence, waiting for Coach Geenleaf to come in and chew us out. To my surprise, he did no such thing. He handled it calmly and told us to remember that game for future reference. The game left a bitter taste in our mouths and we came ready to play Saturday night.

We knew Northwest had put up a good fight against Southern Oregon the night before. This meant we could not take them lightly or something similar to Friday night’s game might result. They had good shooters and some good rebounders. A girl that we thought had quit was now back. Her job is to shoot three’s. She did just that. She was 4-10 from behind the arc and helped her team shoot an unlikely 48% from 3-point range.

We held a not-so-comfortable seven point lead at half time. The rest of the game was neck and neck. After the seven point win, Meagan Miyasaka commented that the game was crazy because for as well as we played, we sure didn’t beat them by very much. This team was just like Evergreen in my eyes. They have been playing good basketball and their record does not do them justice. They are playing very well for being on a 12-game losing streak. They just cannot seem to break the cycle. We did not want to go through another loss like the night before, so we got a few extra rebounds (Reno’s offensive rebounds were especially crucial), shot a little higher percentage, made a few more three pointers and came away with the “W”. It was a hard fought game and everyone who played was exhausted afterwards.

Oh and one more thing…I don’t know if everyone is wondering, but as far as Crystal Idrogo’s absence from the game…I have no idea. I do not know what is up with that, and if anyone hears anything, please let me know. ;-) Thanks.