Despite a valiant effort by a women’s basketball team still trying to find their winning touch this season, the Tigers dropped a pair of home games against Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference rivals Trinity University and Schreiner University.
In the first game against the Trinity University Tigers, the Colorado College women came in as clear underdogs. Trinity boasted a 15-1 record compared to the CC’s record of 2-15. The game tipped off at 5:30 p.m. in front a crowd of 104. Colorado College was dominated from the opening whistle. With about two minutes remaining in the first quarter, Colorado College trailed 21-4.
Trinity finished the game with three players in double figures. Senior Monica Holguin led the way for Trinity with 17 points, two assists and no turnovers. Holguin was also a perfect 5-5 from the stripe, to improve her free throw percentage to 79% on the season.
For CC, Senior guard Christina Bowman finished the game with 11 points, shooting 4-11 from the field. Bowman ended the game with three made three pointers from downtown. Senior forward Korbyn Ukasick and sophomore guard Payton Katich added seven points towards CC’s effort.
Colorado College continued to struggle with turnovers. In Friday’s game their 27 turnovers led to 24 points for the Trinity Tigers. Comparably, CC scored just five points off turnovers on the night.
Colorado College shot 60% from the free throw line, and was outrebounded by the thin margin of 35-32.
Sunday’s game represented a chance for the Tigers to get a win over the visiting Schreiner University Mountaineers.
The Tigers got out to a 10-8 lead after the first quarter. They were able to maintain their slight lead and had a 20-19 advantage going into halftime. Katich had a phenomenal first half, going 5-9 from the field for 10 points. The Tigers also held a better shooting percentage through two quarters, edging Schreiner 38% to 33%.
Unfortunately, in the second half the Tigers ran out of gas and were edged by a final score of 68-62.
The Tigers led until 2:19 in the fourth quarter when Mountaineer senior guard Sabriyyah Fennell hit a three pointer to give the visiting Mountainers the lead for good.
Payton Katich finished the game going 9-15 from the field for 18 points, to go along with one assist and three turnovers. Sophomore guard Casey Torbet went 5-13 from the field and made five of her six free throws to finish the game with 16 points. With 1:37 remaining, however, Torbet fouled out of the game.
The Tigers are now ranked eighth in the SCAC with a 1-6 conference record. They have scored 940 points on the year and have allowed 1,234.
Though the Tigers have now lost 14 of their last 15 games, they have shown improvement throughout the season. The narrow loss to Schreiner shows that the Tigers still have fight left in them.
Katherine Menendez has her work cut out for her. The first-year coach certainly has a young lineup and has shown an ability to put her team in the position to win games throughout this season. Once she is able to get her system and style of play in place over the next few seasons, the Tigers should be able to build upon the continued improvement they were able to find this season.
Next up, the Tigers travel to San Antonio, Texas for a rematch against both Trinity and Schreiner. The Trinity game is Friday, January 27 at 5:30 CT, while the Schreiner game is Saturday, January 28 at 5:30 CT.