The Carleton Ravens women’s basketball team split their first weekend of regular season play Nov. 11-12 with a win against the McMaster Marauders and a loss to the Brock Badgers.
Despite the team’s 81-69 victory over McMaster, the Ravens, who are now ranked fourth in the country, could have done much better, according to head coach Taffe Charles.
“We got lucky. We didn’t defend very well, we just weren’t as prepared as we should have been. If we played a better team . . . it would have been different,” Charles said. “Anyway, we ended up with a victory, [but] I wasn’t fully happy with our effort.”
Carleton led the game throughout the second half, but Charles said his team should have won by more points.
“We played better in the third quarter in the second half, we played a little better defensively but the game was a little bit closer than it actually seemed. We won by 12 but, again, we just didn’t play as well as we needed to,” Charles said.
Charles said the team is usually defensive-minded, but their play didn’t reflect that mindset during the game.
Fourth-year guard Alyson Bush, who led the Ravens with 22 points, said she believes the team wasn’t as focused as they should have been going into the regular season.
“It’s a totally different game from pre-season to the actual season,” Bush said. “There’s much more at stake, and teams are definitely working much harder than what we had to deal with in the pre-season. We have to change our attitude and come out to battle every single game.”
The Ravens didn’t find any luck when they visited the Badgers the following day, losing 59-56 in their second game of the season.
Charles said the team could have done better if they hadn’t gone into foul trouble early into the game.
“The game was close and tight, we did have opportunities to win it, but I just feel like we were just a little bit fatigued because we just didn’t get enough contribution from some of the other players on our team, and that was the reason for our foul trouble,” he said.
Fourth-year forward Kendall MacLeod said the opening weekend showed the team they’ve got a number of things to focus on as their season progresses.
“It definitely opened up our eyes about how much work we have to do for the next few games,” MacLeod said.
