Coyote women aim to raise declining record

Before students at the University of South Dakota campus left Vermillion for winter break, the USD women’s basketball team was sitting right where it wanted to be.

The team was holding a 7-5 record and was gaining momentum heading into conference play. Everyone was healthy, and they seemed ready for 2014 to make its way onto the calendar.

But since Dec. 20, the team has produced a lowly 3-5 record, including what was a four-game slide in conference play. According to players and coaches, injuries have rattled team chemistry, defense has been a weak point and the women were searching for answers.

“We’re just trying to re-find an identity for our team after losing a couple of kids to key injury,” head coach Amy Williams. “We’re having to ask a couple of people to step in and play different roles. That’s the first step for us, just trying to re-identify roles and readjust to those changes and just hoping to really focus on being able to protect our home court and play a little bit better defensively.”

Right now, the team is missing a couple of its biggest weapons to injury. Sophomore guard Heidi Hoff has been sidelined for the season with a knee injury, while junior guard Nicole Seekamp, the team’s leading scorer, has been nursing an ankle injury.

Seekamp said she is just taking the injury day-by-day, but she said there’s no rush. She wants to get back to the court at the right time, not just earlier.

“I just want to get it 100 percent before I come back, rather than playing 75 percent through the whole season,” she said.

The Coyotes were able to regroup a bit last weekend when they picked up their first conference win over Nebraska-Omaha Saturday 75-61. The win improved the women to 1-4 in Summit League play, and after an 81-71 loss to Western Illinois two days earlier, the team hopes the time is now for them to make a run in the conference.

“If we’re going to want to win any games in our league, we’ve got to keep our foot on the gas for 40 straight minutes, and we’re going to have to play full ball games,” Williams said.

The slide began in Lincoln, Neb., where the Coyotes fell by 34 points, 87-53. The team turned around quickly to pick up two victories at Valparaiso and at home against Cleveland State, where the wins stopped.

“In three games, we have given up over 81 points in each of those ball games and into the 90s,” Williams said. “Certainly that’s not going to get it done. Trying to correct holes in our defense is the biggest focus we have moving forward.”

Those three games were not the way the Coyotes wanted to start conference play, Williams said. Allowing 96 points to Fort Worth, 80 to IUPUI and 91 to Denver left the team with a 9-9 record before their game Jan. 23 against Western Illinois.

The one bright spot of the games came from senior forward Polly Harrington, who led the team in scoring in the two contests. She said she was more concerned about what’s happening on the defensive side, rather than the offense.

“That’s what we want to get better at because we know that if we don’t get better then we won’t win any games,” Harrington said. “We don’t want that result.”

Harrington said the team looked to move past their mistakes from the last few games and gear up for the season’s stretch run. Both Harrington and Williams are looking forward to everyone getting healthy and playing their best basketball at the right time, they said.

This next stretch of games is an important one to the team, Williams said. This week holds matchups with North Dakota State and South Dakota State, two of USD’s biggest rivals.

Still, the team wants to take the games one at a time and look to improve by the time March rolls around, Williams said.

“Our focus has been from the very beginning of this season to try each and every day out here to use that as an opportunity to become the best team we are capable of becoming,” Williams said. “We feel that is a gradual process, but we want to be playing our best basketball when we head into that conference tournament.”

The Coyotes and NDSU will tip off from Fargo, N.D. Thursday, starting at 7 p.m.

Follow reporter Nathan Ellenbecker on Twitter @NJE13