Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
CALGARY – Defence wins championships, but it's not always enough to win a game on its own.
The MacEwan Griffins women's basketball team found that out on Saturday, locking things down well on their side of the court only to be undone by offensive struggles on the other end in a 64-52 loss to the Mount Royal University Cougars.
It's the second-straight loss for the Griffins, who also fell 83-60 to MRU in Friday's Canada West season opener.
"Today, we put forth a much better effort defensively," said head coach Katherine Adams. "We only gave up 64 points, compared to the 83 yesterday.
"A big difference for us today is we just didn't make shots. We were 17 of 60 from the field and just struggled to get into a rhythm offensively. We really relied on our defence to keep us in it, which it did. We just didn't produce enough at the offensive end for that to be enough."
Shooting 28.3 per cent from the field isn't going to net many wins, no matter how hard the defence plays, but at least they have something to build off of on their own side of the floor.
"That's an area of growth, for sure," said Adams. "We'll continue to work on the offensive side of things."
MacEwan also committed 25 turnovers, which is better than the 33 they had on Friday, but still needs to improve for Adams' liking.
"The turnover issue from yesterday still plagued us a bit," she said. "We had 25 turnovers today, which is still not a number we're happy with, but it is a reduction."
Shannon Majeau was the only Griffins player in double digits with 12 points. MRU was led by Bella Gaulden, who bucketed 15.
The Griffins are next in action for their home opener on Nov. 12 vs. Calgary (6 p.m., David Atkinson Gym, Canada West TV presented by Co-op).