Losing that feeling

Women’s basketball can’t bring an end to their losing streak over weekend

Post Jill Wheat gets possession of the ball in a loss to the Rams.
Image supplied by: Photo supplied by Marta Iwanek
Post Jill Wheat gets possession of the ball in a loss to the Rams.

The women’s basketball team’s struggles continued on their road trip to Toronto last weekend. The Gaels suffered a 74-64 overtime loss to the Ryerson Rams and an 82-48 loss against the University of Toronto Varsity Blues. The team’s losing streak is now four games long and their record stands at 3-13.

The Gaels, leading by 12 points at half-time, came out strong in their Friday night game against the Rams. Ryerson tied the game at 59 after storming through the second half, outscoring Queen’s 37-20.

“We went into the game pretty well,” head coach Dave Wilson said. “We executed fairly well in the first half, played a solid game. [After halftime,] Ryerson changed their defence and we had a great deal of difficulty adjusting … that really was the turning point of the game, our inability to adjust to their defence.”

Against Ryerson, fourth-year guard Brittany Moore was 7 for 13, scoring a season high 25 points.

Wing Gemma Bullard and post Hanna Koposhynska both scored 14 points while post Jill Wheat had 15 rebounds. Fouls were a factor with the Rams taking 20 more free throws than the Gaels.

Against the Blues, the Gaels were down only 32-25 at halftime but were outscored 50-23 in the second half. Wilson said the Toronto game was a tough one for the Gaels.

“[Toronto] played extremely well, which doesn’t help,” he said.

“Us being a little bit smaller, not so deep because of our injuries and coming off an overtime game, I thought we battled very hard in the first half. They’re big and they’re deep. In the second half, we had nothing left … they, quite frankly, steamrolled us.”

Moore had 11 points, guard Liz Boag had 10 and Bullard had nine. The Gaels had a 27 per cent field goal rate while the Blues had 49.3 per cent. The Gaels also committed 21 turnovers compared to the Blues’ eight.

“Turnovers are a huge issue,” he said. “Turnovers and rebounding are the two largest issues that we face on a fairly regular basis. Toronto’s the number one rebounding team in the country … I was pretty pleased with how we battled on the boards with them. A lot of that has to do with the execution of your offence; you end up with more turnovers if you’re not executing properly.”

The team’s difficulties can be partly attributed to injuries. Wing Christine Wallace and guard Meaghan MacDougall are both recovering from surgery for a torn ACL and a torn MCL respectively. Post Jordan Thomas and guard Rachel Urosevic both have stress fractures in their feet. With only nine active players, fatigue became an issue against the Blues.

“We just ran out of steam,” Moore said.

Their team looked a lot more energetic than us and they were hitting a lot of their shots. … We made some pretty bad mental errors.”

Moore said the team will continue to train, focusing on turnovers and rebounding.

“It’s precision and working on the little things,” Brittany Moore said. “We have to be able to crash the boards a lot better, so we’re working on just being more aggressive on the offensive end. … If we clean up the turnovers and go hard after the boards, we’ll be a stronger team altogether.”

The team travels to Ottawa this coming weekend to face the Ottawa Gee-Gees on Friday and the Carleton Ravens on Saturday. The Ravens, the number four team in the country, only won by two the last time they played the Gaels.

“Carleton should be a good game,” Moore said. “They’re playing pretty sporadic, so if we’re able to play our game and dictate the pace of the game, then there shouldn’t be [a] problem.”

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