Women's Basketball Roundup - Dec. 6
The Wittenberg women's basketball team broke a three-game losing streak on Saturday with an 83-37 thrasing of winless Oberlin.
The Wittenberg women's basketball team broke a three-game losing streak on Saturday with an 83-37 thrasing of winless Oberlin.
The win - in Wittenberg's North Coast Athletic Conference and home opener - evened the Tigers' overall record at 3-3 overall. It also served notice to the rest of the conference that the extraordinarily deep Tigers, who gave 17 players at least eight minutes of action in the game, will be a force to be reckoned with again in the conference title chase.
Wittenberg jumped out to a 16-2 lead in the opening minutes of the game and never looked back, quickly burying memories of a disappointing performance in an 18-point loss at perennial Ohio Athletic Conference powerhouse Wilmington on Dec. 1. By game's end, junior wing Megan Miller (Lancaster, Ohio/Lancaster) had drilled five three-pointers to finish with a game-high 15 points and freshman post Lauren Rivers (Powell, Ohio/Worthington Christian) added a career-high 12 points in just 10 minutes off the bench. Rivers hit all of her five shots from the field and both free throws.
Miller ranks second on the team with 11.7 points per game, but more importantly she is hitting nearly 55 percent of her three-point shots, a key statistic for a young team in search of an offensive identity. Combined with the outstanding all-around play of junior post Kathy Hittle (Noblesville, Ind./Noblesville), who leads the Tigers with 12.3 points and 10.2 rebounds per outing, Miller's three-point shooting could help keep opposing defenses off balance.
Also of note has been the steady play of senior guard Brittany Landreth (Mantua, Ohio/Valparaiso (Ind.)). She is shooting above 50 percent for the first time in her career, and she leads the Tigers with 14 assists (against just nine turnovers) and 15 steals.
The Tigers are off until Saturday, when they will head to Wooster to play the Scots in a key early-season game. With defending regular season champion Kenyon and defending conference tournament titlist Denison off to a combined 13-1 start this season, the Tigers must keep pace early in preparation for what appears to be a very competitive conference title chase in 2005-06.