By Dominic LoVallo
Staff Writer
The women’s basketball team started its 2015-16 season with a win last Saturday in an exhibition game against the Edinboro University Fighting Scots, 79-37.
Head Coach Jim Crowley was happy with the performance of his players in their first game of the season and believes they are well prepared for the regular season to begin, he said.
“I was most pleased with our effort,” Crowley said. “I thought we played really hard. I was very pleased with how we shared the basketball. I thought we did a very good job there. Certainly [we have] some things to work on, but we were ready shooters and we, for the most part, shared the basketball well.”
The Bonnies ran their offense through seniors Katie Healy and Nyla Rueter and sophomore Miranda Drummond. The three totaled 23 of the team’s 63 shots taken, and they scored a combined 43 points out of the team’s 79.
Healy stressed how the team has been working on defense a little bit more than offense to prepare for the upcoming season.
“In practice we have been working on defense, not so much worried about offense,” Healy said. “We need to make sure we shut teams down, and this was a good start to it.”
Players said they have been working on shooting to prepare for the season. With Rueter going five for eight from the field with two free throws last weekend and Drummond going six for nine from the field with two free throws, the work is already starting to pay off.
“In practice we’ve been working on timing with drives and getting my feet set so I think that has really helped a lot because I lost that last year,” Rueter said. “So that’s the main thing I’ve been working on.”
Drummond has been working on not getting discouraged, which came in handy Saturday after she began the game missing her first three shots, she said.
“I’ve been working a lot on my shot this summer,” Drummond said. “That was something [I] wanted to get better at because I was more of a driver last year, so I just wanted to work on my shot. I started off a little slow, but that’s another thing I’ve been working on: not getting down on myself. I struggled with that last year, but I guess I just left it behind me and moved on.”
Crowley feels the team’s chemistry may feel like it came quickly because the Bonnies are only one game into their new season, but it really comes from years of effort and new players buying in to his systems.
“It may have looked like it built quickly,” Crowley said. “But they have put a lot of time in together in a lot of tough situations. You have five kids who have been together for four years, and that starts it. Then we have a great group of younger kids who have really bought in to what we want to do and, this spring summer and fall, we’ve had some really good leadership.”
This Friday the Bonnies will play in round 1 of the Women’s National Invitational Tournament (WNIT) at 5:30 p.m. against the Siena University Saints. The Bonnies will also play Sunday, but the remainder of the details on this game have not yet been announced.
