Led by Cox, Women's Basketball Tops the Camels

All too often in the minds of the casual sports fan, the importance of each contest is lessened due to the sheer number of games played in a season. This particular perception could not be farther from the truth for Trinity Women's Basketball as they continue to try to make their way into the NESCAC playoffs. Trinity opened up its action-packed weekend slowly as they dropped their first contest against the Wesleyan University Cardinals on Friday night by the deflating score of 59-39. Wesleyan jumped on Trinity from the opening tip-off, and jumped out to an early 13-4 lead after just six minutes of play. The Cardinals continued to put pressure on the Bantams, and increased their lead to 38-22 at the half.

The first-half struggles proved to only be the beginning of this very long night for the Bantams, who found themselves trailing the Cardinals by as many as 26 points in the second half before the final buzzer rang.

Although Trinity's leading scorer, senior captain Sarah Cox, experienced some uncharacteristic struggles, hitting only one of her 11 field goal attempts, she was able to contribute by handing out a team-high three assists in the game.

Trinity also got a lift from freshman Christine Card. Card, who is averaging 10.5 points per game in her first collegiate season, which is second on the team only to Cox's 17.3 average, led the way for the Bantams with 10 points and four rebounds. Card has been a terrific surprise for Head Coach Wendy Davis all season long, and in addition to her impressive scoring, she also has become quite the low-post enforcer, averaging 6.4 rebounds per game and regularly swatting shots, giving her a total of 22 blocks on the season.

Card continued her dominance Saturday afternoon leading the Bantams to an impressive 63-44 victory over the Connecticut College Camels to get back on the winning track. Card, who scored 16 points, grabbed 13 rebounds, and rejected three Camels' shots, was helped out by Cox, who rebounded well from her tough outing the previous night.

Cox led the way for Trinity against the Camels, scoring a game-high 19 points, which put her over the 1,000-point mark for her Trinity career. This impressive accomplishment moves Cox into eighth place on Trinity's all-time leading scorers list, and makes her the first woman to eclipse 1,000 points since Gretchen MacColl '00. In addition to leading the team in scoring, rebounding, and steals, Cox has also been "an incredible leader this season and is really the foundation of this team," according to senior guard Cat Maher.

Behind Cox and Card's stellar performances, the Bantams were determined from the very start, and jumped out to a 29-12 lead at halftime after Maher hit back-to-back jump shots to close first-half play. Maher called the win a "true team effort," and explained that "it felt great to play like a team again on Saturday, and obviously winning is much more fun."

Nowhere in the game did the team effort show up more clearly than on the defensive end of the court where, in the first half, the Bantams set the tone for their dominance of the entire game, which was accentuated by Card's three blocks and the team's eight steals. The Bantam's suffocating defense forced the Camels to shoot only 29.5 percent from the field in the game, and only 17.2 percent in the first half. Forcing as many missed shots as they did, the Bantams put great importance on controlling the boards, which they did by out-rebounding the Camels 47-30. Trinity won every aspect of Saturday's game, helping them to put the disappointing loss to Wesleyan far behind them.

Coming out of the weekend with a win and a loss is not wholly abnormal for the 11-10 Bantams, whose season can be characterized by a number of streaks of both wins and losses. Maher acknowledged these losses, saying, "we've lost some games this year that we definitelyshould have gotten and it's so frustrating to lookbackin regret, but we can't focus on those games. We know how good we can be and we just need to make sure we play upto our potential in the remaining games this season."

Though they are extremely focused, the Bantams certainly have their work cut out for them as they look to put consecutive wins together when they take the court again on Feb. 8 against Fitchburg State. This will prove to be quite the test for Trinity, since Fitchburg State has won 18 straight games since their only loss of the season on opening night. The Bantams then wrap up their regular season schedule at Amherst College, who are coming off consecutive losses to Connecticut College and Wesleyan.