Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – As they put a wrap on a five-game preseason schedule with a trio of home matches last weekend, the MacEwan women's basketball team saw some encouraging growth and some things they need to work on.
They have a week and a half until their season-opening weekend at Mount Royal University (Oct. 29, 6 p.m. and Oct. 30, 4 p.m., Canada West TV presented by Co-op).
"We played two weeks ago out at UBCO and we used that kind of as a measuring stick to see where we're at," said head coach Katherine Adams. "We picked out some specific things that we wanted to improve on for this past weekend.
"The areas that we wanted to grow in, we showed some growth, but it obviously highlighted some areas we need to continue to grow."
MacEwan earned its first victory of the preseason – an 83-66 win over UNBC last Friday – which featured 18 points each from Mackenzie Farmer and Drew Knox, while Hannah Gibb chipped in 15.
"It's the first game where we got a lot of contributions from different people and shot the ball very well from the three-point line," said Adams. "Drew Knox came in and went 5-for-8 and 4-for-5 from the three-point line.
"It was really good to see some scoring coming from that area where we haven't necessarily proven ourselves to be effective in previous years. Obviously, that was a long time ago, but it's just some growth moving forward and something we can continue to build on, around the other weapons we have offensively."
Other results from the weekend, included an 88-79 loss to UBCO and an 80-52 defeat to Regina, but even those included plenty of growth moments.
"In terms of where we're at in our season looking forward, I think it was a perfect weekend – an opportunity for us to check in, see where we're at and keep moving forward," said Adams.
The Griffins' regular season home-opening weekend is set for Nov. 12-13 vs. Calgary.