By Jacob Ervin, Senior Reporter
The Northwestern women’s basketball team split its two games last week with a win on Jan. 26 to the Harding Lady Bisons and a loss on Saturday to the Arkansas Tech Golden Suns.
The Lady Rangers were on a five-game losing streak heading into their matchup with Harding, which was the No. 1 team in the Great American Conference at the time.
The Lady Rangers pulled off the upset win, 69-66, thanks to a strong first half performance that gave them a 13-point lead going into halftime.
Josena Frame, shooting guard for the Lady Rangers, credits their win to the team’s successful execution of its defensive plan.
“I felt like we really locked down on the defensive end,” Frame said. “They have the best player in the GAC right now, so it was big to shut her down, and that is exactly what we did.”
The Lady Rangers did not ride the success of their upset win into their Saturday home game against Arkansas Tech. The Lady Rangers lost, 63-56.
The Lady Rangers were trailing by one point going into the fourth quarter, but Arkansas Tech was able to pull away with 21 points in the final frame.
With the loss at home, Northwestern fell to 8-9 for the season and 4-9 in conference play, which currently makes the Lady Rangers the 8th seed in the GAC.
The top eight teams in the conference will advance to the GAC tournament at the end of the regular season, and the Lady Rangers have nine games remaining.
The Lady Rangers’ next chance to add a win to their record will be in an away game Thursday against Arkansas-Monticello, and Frame said she is confident that they will do exactly that.
“We played them here once, and we won it here,” Frame said. “I don’t think we even played our best, and we still managed to pull it out, so I really think that we’ve got a great shot.”
After traveling to Monticello, Arkansas, on Thursday, the Lady Rangers will have another road game at Magnolia, Arkansas, to take on the Muleriders of Southern Arkansas on Saturday.
The team will finally have its next home game Feb. 9 against Ouachita Baptist.