Rock women’s basketball got off to a slow start at Edinboro Wednesday evening, getting outscored by the Fighting Scots 20-10 in the first quarter ultimately leading to an 83-66 defeat in its first Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) game of the year.
“At the beginning of the game, our shot selection was not good,” Rock head coach Bobby McGraw said. “As far as dribble penetration, we were settling for too many open jump shots early, and not taking advantage mismatches.”
The SRU defense was unable to find an answer to stop Edinboro guard Katie Fischer, who scored 26 points while making 10-17 field goals with seven assists. Boro was also led in the paint by center Aignee’ Freeland who collected nine rebounds while scoring 18 points. Fischer played all 40 minutes of the contest. McGraw credits both players’ performances to SRU’s inability to lock them down as it switched to a zone defense.
“Freeland has the ability almost every time she touches the ball,” McGraw said. “We had to go to the zone to somewhat contain her. After that, Katie Fischer just ripped our zone apart. As a unit, we decided we weren’t going to play defense. We had to pick our poison and our poison was the zone defense. All of the credit to Katie Fischer in this one, we weren’t able to stop her.”
Junior guard Lexi Carpenter led all Rock scores with 22 points in 33 minutes of work. Sophomore Ciara Patterson chipped in 16 points with three steals and two assists. Senior Erica Aiello helped The Rock’s cause with seven points and five assists.
Although The Rock got off to a poor start, the team did bounce back in the second quarter by matching the Fighting Scots with 21 points. The team actually outscored Edinboro in the third quarter, before the Scots posted the advantage in the fourth quarter 28-21 to ensure victory.
Despite his team’s early struggles, McGraw is preparing his team to look past this game and focus on its upcoming match Saturday against Mansfield.
“Our preparation and focus right now is on Mansfield,” McGraw said. “Edinboro is done and over with. We know that no team in the PSAC-West is going to go undefeated, so losing one game in the West isn’t going to kill anybody. We don’t just play in what is arguably the toughest conference in the country, we might play in the toughest division in the country. We just have to focus Mansfield and get our team back on the winning track.”
