Women’s basketball falls in exhibition games

Chadron State’s women’s basketball team has played two exhibition games to start of the 2012-13 season. The first was against Bringham Young University, played last Thursday, when the Eagles lost 89-51. After that loss, the Lady Eagles traveled to Colorado Springs to take on the Air Force Falcons. The story was much the same when they were beat  83-57. Injuries took a toll on CSC in both games.

“Injuries are an unfortunate part of the sport, but fortunately we have capable players that can step up when these injuries occur,” Head Coach Tim Connealy said.

In the game against BYU, Chadron had trouble scoring, and had only one player end the game with double figures. Dallas Shaw, sophomore guard of Buffalo, Wyo., scored 17 points, most of which were free throws.

Top scorer for BYU was Ashley Garfield who also scored 17 points.

BYU shot 48.1 percent, compared to CSC’s 24.6 percent. Another contributor was Hattie Guzman, redshirt freshman guard of Scottsbluff, who scored nine points.

For CSC, Jazmin Lopez, freshman guard of Indio, Calif., led in steals with four to help the Eagles defense. However, the Eagles only tallied 10 total steals, while the Cougars completed the game with 24.

In the game against the Air Force Falcons, the competition was pretty even in the first half when the Eagles only trailed by nine points after the first 20 minutes. However, turnovers proved to be the deciding factor in the game. The Falcons scored 35 points off of 33 CSC turnovers. Overall, CSC improved their  shooting percentage from the BYU game to 36 from the field, while Air Force ladies shot 43 percent.

Leading scorer for CSC was Jazmin Lopez. She scored 14 points and had nine rebounds. Two more guards, junior of Rapid City, S.D., Kattie Ranta and Hattie Guzman both score 12 points. Ranta also had nine boards and Guzman contributed eight.

“Our goal this season is to improve every day.  We have been working on improving all areas of our game but our focus has been man to man defensive rotations” Connealy said. “We put them through a hard pre-season redgimine which I feel brought them closer together as a team.”

The Lady Eagles host Montana State University-BIllings at 3 p.m. on Sunday in Armstrong.