Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – Heading out on their first road trip of 2020 – a two-game visit to Winnipeg this weekend – the MacEwan women's basketball team is packing a few building blocks in their luggage.
Most notably, they're coming into matches against the Wesmen (Friday, 5 p.m. MT and Saturday, 6p.m. MT, both Canada West TV presented by Co-op) off their best offensive output of the season.
The Griffins topped 70 points for the first time, albeit in a losing effort, when they fell 94-76 to the Manitoba Bisons last Saturday.
"After Friday, we found some things that kind of worked for us and went to it a bit more on Saturday, and saw some success on the scoreboard, which was really good," said head coach Katherine Adams. "We hope to continue to build momentum in that area and tighten things up defensively to put together a more complete game."
Allowing teams to score more than 90 is never a recipe for a success in the Canada West women's basketball ranks and Adams expressed a desire to get back to the gritty style of tooth-and-nail defence that the Griffins are known for.
So, you can guess what this week's practices have been all about.
"There's a couple things," noted Adams. "Certainly (we're working on) our one-on-one defensive efforts – containment, not letting the ball move quite so easily around the perimeter that forces us to have to chase and scramble. (We're also working on) some team communication things as well. You get one person who's a second late or misses a rotation or has a miscommunication and it puts us all under the pump a little bit to have to scramble and rotate and recover.
"We came up against a hot-shooting team from the three-point line last weekend and they really punished us for it, so hopefully we can tighten up those areas a little bit and have some better luck on the defensive end this weekend."
Winnipeg (6-4) has always been a team with ample heart and hustle, so the Griffins (2-8) know they're going to have be ready to battle in order to compete.
"They're tough," said Adams. "Winnipeg's a good team that's very well coached. You always know you're going to have a tough, gritty battle on your hands with them.
"That said, the focus remains on us, what we can do and areas we can get better at and grow on."
