Despite the first game of the 2014-15 season being months away, the Ravens women’s basketball team will need to work hard in the summer to continue its recent success, according to head coach Taffe Charles.
The Ravens’ season ended early after a hard fought 75-70 double overtime loss to the Wilfrid Laurier University Golden Hawks at the Ravens Nest March 8.
Charles said his team played well in its final game, but it echoed many of the other times in the season where they failed to contend with more experienced teams.
“We had many opportunities to win,” he said. “I think that game was kind of a microcosm of our whole season. I think we did some really good things, at times we played very well.”
Charles said both teams were evenly matched, but his team simply did not have the experience needed to advance.
“That was kind of the theme of the season,” he said. “Unfortunately, experience is experience, and when you’re playing against fourth-year kids and you have a lot of first-year kids, they tend to make mistakes.”
Second-year forward Lindsay Shotbolt said the team is looking forward to the next season, despite losing fifth-year guard and Ontario University Athletics (OUA) East player of the year Elizabeth Roach.
“I project us being a competitor at nationals,” Shotbolt said.“That’s obviously a dream come true for anybody.”
Charles said losing Roach will have a dramatic impact on his team.
“[Roach] is going to be a big loss because she was such an exceptional player,” he said.
He said they will be an even younger team after losing Roach, with only two remaining players having more than one year of experience.
Shotbolt said they will have to work hard in the off-season to combat the lack of experience.
She said with a hard work ethic during the summer the team can return to the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) Final 8.
“We want to be a team to be reckoned with,” she said.
The Ravens are looking to return to the Final 8 tournament in 2015 after being snubbed by the Golden Hawks this season.
In 2013, they lost in quarter-final action 59-51 to the University of Calgary Dinos.
First-year guard Stephanie Carr, who has not experienced the Final 8 tournament, said making it there next season would be a huge step forward for her team.
“Obviously it would be a big deal because we get to play against people that aren’t from the province,” she said. “They say it’s another world because we get to play against OUA teams all the time.”
Charles said he couldn’t stress enough that his team has the potential, but needs to get stronger.
“[CIS] is our goal,” he said. “We’re going to try and reach it, but we have a lot of work to do in the off-season to accomplish that.”
