The Keene State College 2017-2018 women’s basketball team has faced a lot of adversity this year as a young team, but is working on trying to win more games before the season ends.
The women’s basketball team is currently 3-15 overall and 1-7 in the Little East Conference.
Luke Sweeney / Equinox Staff
However, senior guard and captain Sandi Purcell has high hopes for the rest of the season.
“All but a couple of games we have been right there, so I have high hopes considering all the adversity we have had to face. We lost a lot of people due to injuries right at the beginning of the season. This lowered our numbers, and then I broke my ankle and was out for six weeks. Regardless of all that our team has really pushed through,” Purcell said.
Currently, the women’s basketball team has one senior, one junior, five sophomores, and four first-years.
This is a significant spread in age compared to the primarily team last year.
Kenzie Bennett, a sophomore and forward for the team, had thoughts on last season compared to now.
“We were a completely different team last year. We were older, had played together for a while, and won a lot of games. This year the chemistry is different, but not in a bad way. We have different strengths and weaknesses than we did last year. We had to adjust and put last year behind us because it is a new year, it is a new team, and we need to treat it as such,” Bennett said.
Being an upperclassmen this year, junior Emily McPadden and point guard, has helped show underclassmen the ropes.
“We have such a small team that it has been easy to bond with everyone,” McPadden said.
She added, “I think we work well as a team and the veteran players have really shown the freshman how college basketball works.”
Moving forward, the team recently won a game against Plymouth State on Wednesday, Jan. 24.
The final score being 62-49 with the Owls coming out on top.
In preparation for the game, Purcell says, “At the practice leading up to the Plymouth game, we made it our mission to have very competitive, hard working practices to prepare for the game. We all agreed that somehow, we had to find a way to win, and the only way we knew how to do that was through our hard work. Of course, after that win, we were all ecstatic, and I think it really helped our confidence to get a win under our belt in the conference,” said Purcell.
In their future plans to make improvements and changes for playoffs the team will focus on individual skills, teamwork, and overall determination.
More specifically, “Some changes that need to be made before playoffs are just tightening up, play calling, and looking for the extra pass will be very valuable to us. Also crashing the boards and playing solid defense, not allowing the best players in the league to have great games,”McPadden said.
Julia Eichman can be contacted at jeichman@kscequinox.com
