Shannon Welch/Photo Editor
According to the schedule, the women’s basketball team played host to the Courtyard by Marriott Tournament on Friday, Nov. 30 and Saturday, Dec. 1. Look at the box scores, though, and a different story emerges. For all intents and purposes, the Cardinal women welcomed their three potential opponents to Silloway Gym in order to stage an emphatic home opener. In Wesleyan’s two games last weekend, the home team did not trail in any of its 80 minutes of play. The result was less a tournament in earnest and more a showcase for how good this team can be.
Wesleyan’s first victim was Johnson and Wales University, which very quickly became familiar with the staunch Cardinal defense. The season is still young, but it is already abundantly clear that this Wesleyan team is not going to shoot the lights out, but win by harrying its opponents into a state of offensive ineptitude. In the first half against Johnson and Wales, the Cardinals shot 45.5 percent from the field, a good mark, but not a great one. On the other hand, their opponents only hit 25.8 percent of their shots, which is just abysmal. That’s how the Cardinals built a nine-point lead in just over five minutes and cruised into halftime with a 37-21 lead. As long as Wesleyan’s defense remains so disruptive, the team won’t need anything better than above-average scoring; no adversary that shoots so poorly would have any chance to come back.
Johnson and Wales may have uncovered one slight error in the Cardinals’ design in the second half. Wesleyan was thoroughly outmatched from the free throw line in the contest, going only 7-16 from the charity stripe. Meanwhile, Johnson and Wales attempted 23 free throws in the final 20 minutes alone, sinking 13 of them. If the Cardinals cannot stop teams from getting to the line so often, they run the risk of undoing much of their great defensive work, especially if they don’t convert on their own free throw attempts. That’s how a clearly inferior foe played Wesleyan so close in the final frame, but the Cardinals won the second half 28-27 nonetheless. Amber Wessells ’14, KellyAnn Rooney ’14, and captain Kendra Harris ’13 all reached double digits in scoring, while only one Johnson and Wales player hit that mark as Wesleyan coasted to a 65-48 win.
As a point of comparison, the St. Joseph’s College team that Wesleyan faced on Saturday had just dropped 74 points on Mitchell College to reach the championship game, with their guard-forward tandem of Laura Cohen and Amanda Bender combining for 46 of them. The next day, Cohen and Bender were held to just 19 as the Cardinals’ second game took on the same narrative as their first. Wesleyan crushed its opponent from an efficiency standpoint, outshooting St. Joe’s 44.8 percent to 28.0 percent. If the Cardinals faced anything resembling adversity in these two games, it came when a Cohen three-pointer tied the score 4-4 with 37:42 remaining in the contest. After leading the entire way against Johnson and Wales, that was the first and only time in the Courtyard by Marriott Tournament that Wesleyan was even tied beyond the game’s scoreless start. Less than a minute later, Dreisen Heath ’15 hit a layup, her first field goal on a perfect 5-5 day, and the Redbirds stayed ahead for good. Wesleyan once again cruised to a cushiony first half lead, heading into the break up 35-18.
This time around, the Cardinals continued to pour it on in the final 20 minutes. Just past the midpoint of second half, Cherkira Lashley ’15 put back an offensive rebound to cap off a 19-3 run, giving Wesleyan a 54-21 and turning a walkover into an absolute laugher. Mercifully, head coach Kate Mullen’s squad took its foot off the pedal at that point, allowing St. Joe’s to cut the deficit to as comparatively little as 21 before taking the game and the tournament with a 66-43 drubbing. Miller Hartsoe ’15 came off the bench to top the Cardinals with 26 minutes played in the blowout. In that extended play, she led the team with 13 points and 10 rebounds, her first double-double of the season. Rooney and Heath also registered double-digit point totals in the contest. Though Wessells scored just five points against St. Joe’s, she was named the tournament MVP on the back of her performance against Johnson and Wales.
With two more wins under its belt, the women’s basketball team now stands strong with a 4-1 record. Its next game is right back at Silloway Gym on Tuesday, Dec. 4 as the Cardinals take on Western New England University.