Fans of strong defensive play won’t want to miss this weekend’s women’s basketball at Fort Lewis College.
The Skyhawks (6-5, 3-4 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference) will welcome New Mexico Highlands (4-8, 3-5 RMAC) and Western New Mexico (5-6, 3-5 RMAC) to Whalen Gymnasium for a pair of home games Friday and Saturday at 5:30 p.m. each day.
With the longest road trip of the season and winter break out of the way, head coach Jason Flores and the Skyhawks are anxious to defend home court, where the team is 3-1 this season.
“From here on out, this is the money time in conference,” Flores said. “After we got the split on the road last weekend, we talked about defending home court. It’s important, because it can make or break you and keep you in the race or not.”
FLC will play four of its next six games at home, beginning with N.M. Highlands on Friday.
The Skyhawks currently sit in eighth place in the RMAC, with the N.M. Highlands Cowgirls and Western N.M. Mustangs falling in right behind them.
The mission now is to take care of business at home and work to climb into the top six in the conference, which would earn FLC another trip to the conference tournament.
But for that to happen, FLC will need its offense to match the level of its defensive play, which is tops in the conference.
FLC has the second-best scoring defense, allowing only 59.1 points per game while holding opponents to an RMAC-best 34.4 percent shooting. But the Skyhawks’ offense ranks 11th out of 14 teams in scoring at 62.6 points per game. FLC’s 37.9 percent shooting ranks 10th in the league.
Junior forward Mary Brinton has stepped up with 13.1 points per game to go along with six rebounds per game, but FLC has struggled to replace its three leading scorers from a season ago with a young team this season.
“We’ve been putting up a lot of shots in the gym. We’re getting better shots, and I think the thing you worry as a coach about is if we’re putting them in the position to get good shots, and I think the answer is yes,” Flores said. “With more experience will come better play. We have players who haven’t carried that scoring load before, and it’s been an adjustment period.”
Both of FLC’s opponents this weekend shoot 39.8 percent from the field. Jenny Johnson has led the Cowgirls with 13 points per game, and she has the best 3-point shooting percentage in the RMAC at 55.3 percent while making 2.1 per game.
The Cowgirls are the second-best 3-point shooting team in the conference at 37.2 percent. That’s been an area the Skyhawks have struggled this season, making only 24.3 percent of their 3s.
The Western New Mexico Mustangs boast the best scoring defense in the RMAC at 58.5 points per game, and they’ve held opponents to 22.4 percent shooting from 3. Ashley Mitchell leads the Mustangs with 12.8 points per game.
“They always play hard and always do well defensively,” Flores said of the Mustangs. “We have had teams who can score in years past, and they defended us well. They’re gonna come in here and play hard, but our players can’t worry about that until Saturday. Highlands is a good team that’s talented themselves.”
FLC will look to get more scoring out of guards Kate Bayes and Kylie Santos going forward. They are tied for second on the team with 6.9 points per game this season. The Skyhawks also will look to get more offensive production from its other posts opposite Brinton in Kaile Magazzeni, Lynette Hepa and Ande Lampert.
“We started with the four top teams in the conference, and three of those were on the road. We know what the top teams are, and we know we’re not far off,” Flores said. “We will continue to get better, and we know we have a big opportunity. All the teams we’re about to play are within a game of each other, and somebody is gonna start to leak out from the others.
“It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. If we stay focused and get better, we’ll be there at the end.”
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
