Simson Garcia | Sports Editor
Two early leads were unsustainable as the women’s basketball team lost two games on Feb. 1 against the Western Washington Vikings, 66-46 and Feb. 3 against the Simon Fraser Clan, 74-57.
The last time Western Oregon played Western Washington resulted in a winning effort from which the Wolves ended an 18-game losing streak to the Vikings. Free throws were the barometer that enabled the Wolves to barely edge out the Vikings.
This go-around found the Wolves in free throw struggles. As one of the best teams in the GNAC in that category, they shot 7/13 on the night. But a bigger woe was the 3-point shooting as the box score entailed 3/18 from beyond.
As the Wolves looked like the team from their earlier matchup, it was a tale of two different halves. They traded baskets with the Vikings and ended the first-quarter knotted at 16-16.
The Wolves kept it up in the second-quarter and had their biggest lead of six at 27-21 before the Vikings sailed back for the lead at 28-27.
Western was able to keep the Vikings to a low percentage in shooting; 3-point woes were also a problem for Washington.
But the second half was in high contrast compared to the first. The Wolves scored season-low totals in the back to back quarters including its lowest of nine in the third, as part of another team-low of 46 total points for a game on the season.
Washington meanwhile was starting to hit their marks in shooting, and got above 50 percent in the second half.
Overall the Wolves shot 30 percent on the game. In their last meeting, the team not only prevailed in stopping the previous 18-game losing streak but held senior forward Hannah Stipanovich, the top-10 scorer in the GNAC, to four points. In this second match up, she was able to score 17 points.
The Wolves got another early lead against SFU off a pair of three-pointers from senior guards Shelby Snook and Kennedy Corrigan, to establish a 12-6 lead in the first.
And as they were able to have their largest lead of the game at eight, the Clan soon battled back to retain the lead, 32-28, by halftime.
The last these two teams played, free-throws were a theme in the Wolves’s losing try.
The Clan got to the line plenty in that first meeting and continued to do so in the second game. But poor Wolf shooting from three-point carried on from their game in Washington as this time, they shot 3/19.
The second half also paled in comparison to the first as the Wolves couldn’t help matters with their shooting, going 30 percent in the half compared to the Clan’s 62 percent.
The Wolves continue their season and GNAC campaign on a five-game losing streak and hope to shake it off against a pair of Alaska teams on Feb. 8 and 10. The games are at home and both have a start time of 5:15 p.m.
Contact the author at journalsports@wou.edu
Photo by: wouwolves.com
