There’s a sign hung on a bulletin board in the hallway of Whalen Gymnasium, sitting a stone’s throw from the doors leading to the hallway to the women’s basketball locker room. A simple sheet of paper with bold, black words, affixed with staples amid other motivational slogans and schedules to a bright yellow background.
The sign reads “Boys and girls win early in the season; men and women win late in the season,” capped by a pair of exclamation points to drive the message home.
The Fort Lewis College women’s basketball team knows how to be the latter. The Skyhawks won nine of their final 10 regular-season games a year ago to earn an NCAA Tournament berth.
Naturally, that result has little bearing on this year’s squad. But it’s an example of where this edition of the Skyhawks hopes to achieve this time around, starting Friday against Chadron State.
“Last year, we came back (from break) and our players did a great job of really kind of getting on a roll,” FLC head coach Jason Flores said. “And we’re hoping for the same this time. We’re still learning, I think, our team a little bit, but I feel like we’re better now than we were heading into break.”
The Skyhawks will return from the holiday break with lessons learned from a year-end split, falling 89-65 to No. 5 Colorado Mesa before a big bounceback victory against Western State where FLC rallied from a 40-31 halftime deficit with a 47-point second half in a 78-66 victory.
“We have to come to every game like it’s just a new game. You cant dwell on a loss,” FLC forward Kaile Magazzeni said.
Flores said he’s at least satisfied with the fact that the areas the Skyhawks need to improve upon are simpler fixes, not ones that require wholesale schematic changes to mask unfixable problems. And he liked how well his team bounced back with a lockdown defensive effort in the second half against the Mountaineers
“They hit a lot of shots, and it forced us to have to really buckle down defensively. ... On the road, last game before the break, that was a great gut-check for us,” Flores said.
Friday’s opponent, Chadron State, boasts just a 1-9 record but has played a challenging schedule including the likes of Mesa and No. 14 Wayne State and has narrow losses to Western State and Metro State, the latter a game the Eagles led by double-digits.
Saturday, however, should provide the bigger test in the form of Black Hills State, which sits a half-game ahead of FLC in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference standings. If FLC (6-3, 3-2 RMAC) wants to chase down RMAC unbeatens Colorado Mesa and CSU-Pueblo and position itself better come RMAC Tournament time, it’ll need to start this weekend.
“I think it’s very important. We definitely want to be on the upper side of the conference, definitely, going into tournament play,” Magazzeni said.
rowens@durangoherald.com
