Sports & Outdoors

Women’s basketball looks to right the ship in NWC tournament

Going into the games this past weekend, the Logger women’s baseketball team was in second place and was ready to face the top two teams in the conference: Lewis and Clark and George Fox.  The Loggers needed two wins this weekend to earn the conference title and the top seed going into the conference tournament.

In their game against Lewis and Clark, the Loggers fell behind the Pioneers early on and could not get ahead. Only one logger, junior Jocelyn Riordan (Lake Forest Park, Wash.), was able to get into double digits, scoring 11 points. The team averaged a low 22.4 shooting percentage for the game. After losing 75-44, the Loggers had to rebound for their next big game against the George Fox Bruins.

“The Lewis and Clark game was a really tough loss for the team because we never really felt like we were in the game. LC came out right from the jump and never looked back. The team as a whole lacked passion during the game. After the game we made sure to learn from our mistakes in the game but not dwell on them because we had another tough match up the next night against George Fox. We wanted to make sure we didn’t let the negatives from the LC carry over to the next night,” Riordan said.

Their game against the Bruins marked the end of regular season play for the Loggers. In the game, the Loggers fought hard but could not come up with what it took to win in their 83-55 loss.

The Loggers played head to head with the Bruins until about 11 minutes into the first half when the Bruins took the lead and never looked back. Again Riordan was on the money, scoring 19 points and 9 rebounds for the Loggers and McKinnis had 13 points. The Loggers never got closer than 13 points to the Bruins throughout the second half the game.

Fellow Captain sophomore Kelsey McKinnis (Ashland, Ore.) commented, “After the loss at George Fox, we analyzed our game film and can see a lot of undisciplined mistakes that George Fox was able to capitalize on. We are tweaking a few things both offensively and defensively to give them a new look.”

Looking ahead next week, the Loggers, who finished third, will play in the Northwest Conference Tournament starting Thursday.

Riordan said, “We are heading to George Fox this Thursday to play them again in the first round of Northwest Conference tournament. We are one of only four teams in our conference that still have the opportunity to play since we made it to playoffs. We know what mistakes we made when we played them last weekend, so we will do our best to correct them this week in practice. However, the biggest key is to leave it all out on the floor. Whether or not our shots are falling we are going to give it everything we have left and try to represent the University of Puget Sound as well as we possibly can.”