Women’s Basketball: The Story So Far

by Zach

As they finish the fall semester and get ready for their three games during their holiday schedule, the Lady Lobos find themselves sitting at 5-3. This will be their last stretch to get ready for conference play, which starts December 30th. While it is most likely the Mountain West Conference is once again a one-bid league, the Lobos have positioned themselves as one of the favorites to win the regular season championship, or at least end up with a high seed for the conference tournament. That said, I think that it is imperative for the Lobos to win their last three non-conference game, as I think that it would make it possible for them to become an at-large team if they ended up with two or less loses in conference play and end up with a loss in the conference championship game. I don’t think the Lobos want to put their NCAA Tournament chances in the hand of the selection committee, so the goal is clearly to win the MWC Tournament to get the automatic bid. But, before all that, let’s look back at the first eight games of the schedule and some scattered thoughts that I have had during the first month of the season.

Results So Far:

Some people may look at the record so far and be discouraged by the results, especially pointing at the road losses to NMSU and UTEP as bad losses. Truth be told, NMSU is a very solid team that returns all of their best players from a team that made the NCAA Tournament and played a close game in the first round against Maryland. UTEP isn’t as good as NMSU, but the reason the Lobos lost that game is because a bad shooting team shot lights out from three (12-24):. If UTEP shot just above their average, the Lobos probably win that road game and go 2-0 on their Texas road trip last week. The first home loss at WisePies Arena AKA The PIT against Duquesne was much like the UTEP game, but instead of a hot shooting night, the Dukes best player finished the game with 34 points 11 rebound and 6 assists. Even against that performance, the Lobos still had a lead through the first three quarters and had a chance to win the game until the last minute.

The wins the Lobos have had this season have been intriguing. Even though they haven’t played as tough of a schedule as last year, they have taken care of the games they were supposed to and they even faced adversity in their two best wins so far this season. In their game against Sacramento State, they played a team that likes to press and shoot as many threes as possible, which they did against the Lobos. During the game, Sacramento State shot a grand total 47 threes. The Lobos went in prepared with a great game plan, which they followed through to a T to win the game 84-71. In the SMU game that they just played on Saturday, they had to fight through foul trouble against a solid SMU team on the road. One point during the game, the Lobos had committed 17 fouls and SMU had only committed 4. In fact, Khadijah Shumpert had as many fouls as SMU at that point. The Lobos were able to win a road game with their best player picking up her 4th foul in the first minute of the second half, ultimately winning the game 63-58 with great contributions from Jaisa Nunn and Cherise Beynon. It will be interesting to see if Lobos are able to build off this win.

Players of the Games:

As with the Men’s team, we will choose three Players of the Game, using the same breakdown as the Men’s Team. (3 points for first, 2 points for second, and 1 point for third).

Houston Baptist:

  1. 1. Jaisa Nunn (3 total points): 11 points 8 rebounds
  2. 2. Kianna Keller (2 total points): 9 points 7 rebounds
  3. 3. Whitney Johnson (1 total points): 9 points 8 rebounds.

NMSU:

  1. Cherise Beynon (3 total points): 13 points 8 rebounds
  2. Jaisa Nunn (5 total points): 10 points 4 points
  3. Emily Lines (1 total points): 14 points in 10 minutes.

Sacramento State:

  1. Khadijah Shumpert (3 total points): 21 points 10 rebounds
  2. Cherise Beynon (5 total points): 13 points 9 assists 4 rebounds
  3. Jannon Otto (1 total points): 16 points 4 rebounds.

Nicholls State:

  1. Jaisa Nunn (8 total points): 14 points 9 rebounds
  2. Bryce Owens (2 total points): 15 points 6 rebounds
  3. Emily Lines (2 total points): 10 points 5 rebounds.

Southern Utah:

  1. Cherise Beynon (8 total points): 12 points 4 rebounds 5 steals
  2. Khadijah Shumpert (5 total points): 14 points 4 rebounds
  3. Leneah Bryan (1 total points): 8 points 2 rebounds 2 steals.

Duquesne:

  1. Khadijah Shumpert (8 total points): 23 points 6 rebound
  2. Cherise Beynon (10 total points): 10 points 9 rebounds 4 assists
  3. Jaisa Nunn (9 total points): 10 points 7 rebounds.

UTEP:

  1. Khadijah Shumpert (11 total points): 20 points 10 rebounds 2 steals
  2. Cherise Beynon (12 total points): 13 points 4 assist
  3. Bryce Owens (3 total points): 8 points 4 rebounds.

SMU:

  1. Cherise Beynon (13 total points): 13 points 4 assist 3 rebounds 3 steals
  2. Jaisa Nunn (11 total points): 14 points 6 rebounds
  3. Leneah Bryan (2 total points):5 points 3 rebounds 3 assists 3 steals.

Right now, Cherise Beynon leads the race with 13 points with Khadijah Shumpert and Jaisa Nunn right behind at 11 points apiece. Khadijah has the three best games of any of the Lobos and the Lobos will look for her to have those type of games on a more consistent basis.

Looking at the MWC:

So far this season, the Mountain West has just four teams with winning records, with preseason favorite CSU at 6-1, UNLV at 5-2, UNM at 5-3, and BSU at 4-3. Right now, it looks like there are three tiers in the conference with these four teams, then USU, SDSU, FSU, and Wyoming in the second tier, followed by SJSU, Air Force and Nevada. It will be interesting to see if there is movement between the three tiers once the conference schedule starts. It is very possible that 14-4 will win the regular season championship Crown. Since the Women’s schedule is a mirror of the Men’s schedule, there will be some unbalance. So, since the schedule is made for the Men’s side, it is possible for a team to have a very easy schedule compared to another championship contender. UNM may end up being a team that got lucky with their schedule, getting to play SJSU, Air Force and Nevada two times each. If the Lobos take care of business in those six games, they will be well on their way to the 14-win mark.