Women’s Basketball Drops Their Season Opener

It was seven months ago when the Spalding University Women’s Basketball team was rushing the court to celebrate their National Championship. Coach Just and his staff led the program to the best season in school history when it recorded a 20-6 record and topped Southern Virginia University in the National Championship game. Why not do it again?

Last night started that road against Transylvania University which ended in an 80-69 loss by the Golden Eagles. Spalding played a team that returned all 5 starters from last year while the Golden Eagles saw 5 new faces take the court to start the year. While the outcome wasn’t what Coach Just hoped for, he was very positive about the effort and knew the inexperience could play a role in the game. “Our lack of experience really showed, particularly in the first half but we did play better in the second half,” Just stated.

With Transylvania being on the cusp of breaking the top 25 poll, it was no secret that this was going to be a tough matchup this early in the season for the Golden Eagles. “I can’t say that I was totally shocked based on the fact that we played a pretty good team on the road with five new starters,” Coach Just commented.

The game started out very close with the lead going back in forth for the first part of the first half. After a layup by Transylvania forward, Brittany Henderlight, the Pioneers took an 8-7 lead and never looked back. Transylvania led by 15 at half on 51% shooting from the field while Spalding only shot 35%. Defensively, the Golden Eagles put themselves in a big hole, which proved to be their biggest downfall of the night. “I was really disappointed with our overall defense,” Just commented. “Any time that we give up 80 points our chances of winning are not good.”
 
Early in the second half the Golden Eagles were able to cut the lead to 10 on great play by Amber Conniff and Tesha Wright. Wright, while she plays an important role, really impressed Coach Just on opening night. “Probably the biggest surprise of the night was Tesha Wright.  She came off of the bench to score 14 points on 4-4 shooting, including 3-3 from 3 point range.”

In the end the experience of the Pioneers prevailed, however, there were many standouts on the Spalding side. Tesha Wright led the team with 14 points while Amber Conniff chipped in with 13. Spalding’s, Kelley Harrod, was the only player on the court to record a double-double when she tallied 13 points and pulled down 10 rebounds.

Next up for the Women’s team is a trip to Dallas, TX when they take on the University of Dallas this Friday at 6:00pm and then play Austin College on Saturday at 4:00pm.