Women’s Eagles: Choke on Charger Press
By Dominic Sramaty [contributor]
The Kwantlen Eagles women’s basketball team took on the Comosun Chargers on the weekend of Nov. 26 looking for their third and fourth wins of the season.
The Eagles came in Friday night after defeating the Columbia Bible College Bearcats twice the weekend before.
- Despite coming off of a win last week, the women’s team were not able to maintain the momentum to pull of another win. Jocelyn Gollner // The Runner
The Eagles started both games with great pace, and held the Chargers within single digit range.
However, after both halftime breaks, the Chargers came out with a full-court press which the Eagles just couldn’t break. In both third quarters, the Eagles turned the ball over 12 times trying to break the press, and the Chargers capitalized.
They scored 16 points off of turnovers in the third quarter.
From that point on, the Chargers built a lead the Eagles couldn’t overcome.
The Eagles lost 78-57 and 86-53.
Coach Matt McKay believes that the Eagles struggled to capitalize defensively in the third quarters.
“There were a couple times in the third quarters where we had a lapse in intensity and communication defensively.”
McKay believes that the girls didn’t play poorly, rather it was a lack of capitalization on their chances in correlation with a few turnovers.
He went on to say that they “handled the press for the most part really well … it was a little bit of a mental fatigue more than anything. We just got a little sloppy with some passes. It was the little things that made the big difference.”
I believe the women aren’t keeping pace with the other teams in the league. They start extremely well, but as soon as the halftime buzzer comes, they hit a wall and fall behind. They tend to grab second wind by the start of the fourth quarter, but by then they’re down by such a margin that coming back is improbable.
The women really need to find some chemistry to their game if they want to repeat last year and qualify for the provincials. They have three weeks to work out the kinks.
McKay is doing a fantastic job of keeping one starting line up, but the women need to feel that they’re competing for minutes. Hopefully we will see a new Eagles team after the semester break.
