By: Justin Clear-Vekinis, News Correspondent
The women’s basketball team often finds itself running low on intensity and effort in the second half of games. A late collapse is always evident for the Huskies, who are trapped amid a five-game losing streak, with the most recent coming at the University of Drexel 70-63 Sunday.
“In order to get off this losing streak, we have to be able to put a solid game together for 40 minutes,” head coach Daynia La-Force Mann said. “We start off well, but we don’t have solid and consistent intensity and effort throughout our games.”
The loss drops the Huskies to 8-16 on the season and 3-10 in the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) where they are now sitting third to last.
But in the game against the Drexel Dragons, the Huskies collapsed right from the opening tip-off and surrendered a 22-6 run in the opening nine minutes. Drexel guard Kamile Nacickaite led the surge and scored 11 of the points during the run. Nacickaite led all scorers and finished with 30 points on the night.
The Dragons continued to pad their already-comfortable lead, but junior guard Kashaia Cannon scored 11 points of her own to bring the Huskies within six at halftime, trailing 35-29.
With 12 minutes to play in the second half, NU was down 50-40, but a 13-5 run helped the team pull within two points. That is, until Nacickaite scored eight of Drexel’s final 15 points to help the Dragons put the game away.
“In the first half, we started out pretty slow,” La-Force Mann said. “We weren’t hitting shots and it prevented us from pressing them more defensively. We picked up and realized we could play at their level in the second half, and we managed to get the ball inside more and make shots.”
(Kashaia) Cannon led the Huskies with 15 points, and junior guard Jamie Conroy added 11 points and a team-high of five assists.
Sophomore forward Christine Huber chipped in with 12 points and sophomore guard Deanna Kerkhof added 10.
“In the second half, we came out and started to realize that they weren’t so superior to us,” Conroy said. “We could beat them and so we picked up our game. Also, our energy and our defense helped us a lot in the second half. We started pressing hard and that slowed them down.”
The Huskies also fell to Old Dominion 69-44 Thursday, and allowed 33 points off 22 turnovers.
Conroy led the Huskies with a mere 10 points, and a team-high of five rebounds.
The Monarchs outrebounded the Huskies 56-29, garnering 31 offensive rebounds compared to the Huskies nine.
“Rebounding is something we have to make a conscious, mental effort to do,”
La-Force Mann said. “Our nature isn’t to crash the boards and grab a rebound, so we have to mentally adjust to it so that we are doing it every single possession.”
The Huskies went into the locker rooms at halftime trailing 35-23, and were outscored 34-21 in the second half.
“A few of the games we’ve played, once we get down we go back to our old tendencies,” Conroy said. “We have to keep playing hard no matter what the score is and follow through with what we’ve been practicing in order to get a win.”
NU returns to Solomon Court tonight to face the Hofstra Pride at 7 p.m. The last time the Huskies faced the Pride, they lost 77-63 in Hempstead, N.Y.
“We need to do a better job of defending [Hoftstra’s] inside game,” La-Force Mann said. “[Sophomore forward] Shante Evans needs to be contained around the perimeter so she doesn’t get shots off.”
Hofstra is currently tied for sixth place with a 6-7 CAA record and 14-10 overall.
