The Fort Lewis College women’s basketball team went out and tested itself against South Central Region opposition in the nonconference season.
The Skyhawks hope those tests pay off in the crucible of a 22-game conference schedule.
FLC will open Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference play against preseason league favorite UC-Colorado Springs at 5:30 p.m. Friday at Whalen Gymnasium before facing CSU-Pueblo on Saturday.
FLC went 3-1 against a slate of Northern New Mexico, Tarleton State, Texas Woman’s and St. Edward’s, falling on the road at Tarleton State last month. The best win of the bunch came last week in overtime over then-unbeaten St. Edward’s, a 78-76 win that provided a good test of FLC’s mental toughness after the Hilltoppers hit a 3-pointer in the waning moments to force overtime.
“Playing those games hopefully have prepared us to play good teams, especially this weekend,” FLC head coach Jason Flores said at Thursday’s practice. “You learn a lot from those type of games. ... We’ve played in a couple really tight games this year, and we’ve been able to pull out both of them. You always want to learn, but it’s always better to learn from a win.”
The Skyhawks had to fight to pick up the win over Texas Woman’s, as well, winning 52-49 in a game in which they shot just 29.2 percent from the field. The other victory was a blowout over NAIA Northern New Mexico to open the regular season.
The nonconference slate, particularly the last two victories, helped FLC learn to play together and how to rely on each other, sophomore forward Mary Brinton said.
“The biggest thing is learning to play together,” said Brinton, who had a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds against St. Edward’s. “We have so many new people, and it’s just been great to be able to play in games, in different situations and learn each other.”
The Skyhawks also became reacquainted with quality shot selection, an area that stung them in the loss to Tarleton State and the slim victory over Texas Woman’s.
“Offensively, it’s been shot selection and taking care of the ball,” Flores said. “Those are two things where, now that we’ve gone through, we’ve done a better job this week in practice of finally realizing, ‘let’s get good shots; let’s execute a little bit.’
“Because, beginning of the year, we were into firing up a lot of quick shots that were not necessarily great ones, which put a lot of pressure on us defensively.”
The second-year head coach said keeping the defensive effort consistent and cutting down on the unforced errors were the other two big lessons to come out of the nonconference schedule.
Mistakes of that nature become magnified in a wide-open conference race, and FLC will need to keep them at bay starting Friday. UCCS has stumbled to a 1-3 record out of the gate but have a talented roster paced by RMAC Preseason Player of the Year Abby Kirchoff. And head coach Kip Drown’s ThunderWolves’ teams historically have been a thorn in the Skyhawks’ side.
“It’s going to be nice to get in the rhythm of things.
“Not that the other games didn’t mean anything, but this means so much more,” Brinton said.
rowens@durangoherald.com
