By Rebecca Wagner, Student Reporter
The Northwestern women’s basketball team suffered back-to-back losses on Saturday and Monday.
The Lady Rangers fell short of the win, ending the Saturday game with a 68-66 loss to the Oklahoma Baptist Lady Bisons.
“It hurts,” sophomore basketball player Carly Craig said after the Saturday game. “I think this is the best game that we have played as a group. So, it hurts to come up short, but I also think we need to use it as momentum going into Monday.”
Craig was one of the leading players with 16 points. Other leading players of the game were Faith Simpson with 20 points, Camille Thomas with 14 points and Talayah Thomas with 13 points.
Craig started the scoring with a jump shot, followed by Chrissen Harland with a three pointer two minutes into the game.
Thomas and Simpson kept pressure on the Lady Bison with back-to-back layups.
In addition, Simpson scored four straight points to finish up the first quarter. Thomas opened the second quarter with a jump shot.
Craig said her best play of the game was her buzzer-beater three that took place in the third quarter. This left the Lady Rangers trailing 51-50 heading into the final quarter.
The Lady Rangers were tied for most of the fourth quarter until the Lady Bisons were able to score two foul shots, winning the game with the score 68-66.
“Something we have been struggling with is turnovers,” said head coach Tasha Diesselhorst. “We had some kind of timely turnovers. We gave up a lot of offensive rebounds, which turned into second chance points.”
The second chance points Diesselhorst was referring to gave the Lady Bisons 25 points.
The Lady Rangers are currently tied with East Central for 10th place in the Great American Conference.
Diesselhorst said that, before the game, the Lady Rangers were in a three-way tie between eighth, ninth and 10th, and this game was the deciding factor.
On Monday, the Lady Rangers traveled to Weatherford to take on the Lady Bulldogs of Southwestern. After a slow start in the first few minutes of the game, the Lady Rangers rallied to end the first quarter tied at 18.
The Lady Bulldogs took over in the second quarter and eventually won the game, 77-60.
The Lady Rangers’ next game is at home on Thursday against the Lady Bisons of Harding at 5:30 p.m. for a blackout game, and the first 300 fans will receive a free pom-pom.