By Taylor McGinnis and Liza Bennett
Transcript Correspondent and Reporter
Ohio Wesleyan women’s basketball lost to North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) rival DePauw 71-48 on Saturday at their home opener.
Top-ranked DePauw started the game with a 7-0 run. The Bishops out-scored DePauw 30-28 in the second half, but it was not enough to secure a win.
Sophomore Mary Corbett said she felt the Bishop’s second half performance was a good showing.
“I think DePauw is a really well coached team and have a lot of players that consistently do their job,” Corbett said. “They play with a bunch of pressure and if you aren’t used to that pressure, you can get beat by thirty or forty.”
A highlight was sophomore Sarah McQuade, who led the Bishops with a career high of 21 points and two assists. McQuade said she didn’t notice she was putting such high numbers on the scoreboard.
“I was trying to keep our team in the best shape to win at the time,” McQuade said. “Afterwards its obviously an accomplishment, but it did not mean as much as if could have if we would have won.”
Assistant Coach Maggie McCloskey said she was proud to see McQuade have such a great game.
“It was great to see Sarah step up with a big game,” McCloskey said. “She has been one of our hardest workers so it is great to see it pay off.”
Despite the slow start, the team still has high expectations for their season.
Senior post Helen Scheblo said she sees many wins in the Bishops’ near future.
“My hopes for the rest of the season are to see that ‘W’ along the winning column, that is not a ‘hope,’ that is the plan,” Scheblo said. “My team is a competitive family and we have a great coaching staff and all of us are ready to start showing our conference that OWU will not expect anything else but a win no matter what our record or our opponents recorded may be.”
McQuade agreed with Scheblo and said she expects the team to step up and improve in the coming weeks.
“The start to our season hasn’t been as well as we would have liked, but we are so close to breaking away,” McQuade said. “We will be very dangerous later on in the season and on a good pace to make a run in the conference tournament.”
McCloskey said the season is going well and the improvements being made in each game are leaving the Bishops optimistic for their chances in the rest of the season.
“We have a great chance of being very competitive in conference play,” McCloskey said. “We played an extremely tough non-conference schedule to prepare for conference play and we know we are capable of putting it all together with our upcoming games.”
The team’s current record is 1-6. Their lone win occured against Colorado College.
Junior post Tamra Londot said the team’s record is not representative of the effort the team puts into each individual game.
“It’s only been seven games, you win some you lose some,” Londot said. “We always play hard most of the game, it’s just those two to five minutes we don’t that we need to work on.”
The Bishops will continue play over the holidays, and Corbett said she is expecting big things to come from the Bishop Classic “Hoops for Hope” as well as their game against Hope College in Michigan.
“We go to Michigan over the holiday break and play ranked Hope which will be another hard test, but if we put all forty minutes together we will a force to be reckoned with,” Corbett said. “My hopes are that we go into Hope and compete with all we have then come around and win our holiday tournament, last year our holiday tournament was a turnaround for the season so I hope that happens again this year.”
The Bishops next home game will take place on Dec. 29 at 6 p.m. during the Bishop Classic against Case Western Reserve University.