Lady Niners look to get back on track
After their third straight loss, all at home no less, Charlotte 49ers women’s basketball head coach Cara Consuegra said that her team had a choice to make.
“I think the very best teams at some point, the players take over and lead the team and we are are at a cross road where our team needs to step up and take over and decide how they want to finish the season,” Consuegra said following the loss to Old Dominion.
Consuegra speaks from experience. As a player at Iowa, she helped lead her team to the 2001 Big Ten Championship. In coaching stops at Penn State and Marquette, she has seen teams go as far as the Elite Eight.
“I just believe that the best teams that I’ve been apart of, whether a player or coach, there comes a point in time where the team really sets the standard and holds the standard of what is expected everyday,” said Consuegra. “I think my team this year has done a very very good job of responding to the coaches and giving the coaches what they’ve asked for in what we’re demanding, but I don’t think we’ve done a very good job of kind of taking over those types of things before a coach has to do it.”
One of those things are slow first quarter starts. In their last two games, the 49ers (17–8, 9–5) have been outscored 48–23.
“When we play games, especially this time of year where every single possession matters, I don’t have timeouts where I can always correct it,” said Consuegra. “They have to begin to learn and do that on their own.”
Consuegra said she plans on implementing some changes to the team’s pregame warmup to have the team start better out of the gate.
The 49ers can ill-afford to have another slow start against their next opponent, which happens to be on the road at Conference USA leading Western Kentucky. Since losing at Charlotte in January, the Hilltoppers (20–6, 12–2) have won 10 of their last 11 games. In addition, the Hilltoppers are 7–0 at home in league play.
Besides avoiding a slow start, Consuegra said one of the keys to the game will be to compete on the boards. The Hilltoppers are outrebounding opponents by 4.1 rebounds per game in conference play while the 49ers are getting outrebounded by 2.1 rebounds per play in conference play.
Consuegra said another key will be for the 49ers to avoid quick shots. After their first meeting, Consuegra thought her team was not “stellar offensively,” citing that they took tough shots that provided the Hilltoppers easy baskets.
The 49ers have a plethora of offensive weapons that can score at anytime, which can either lead to a quick score or a negative play the other way.
“Sometimes we get caught up and we don’t reverse the ball at all,” said Consuegra. “Western is so good at capitalizing on missed shots or turnovers because they’re such a powerful offensive team, if we don’t make them work on the defensive end, we could find ourselves in a hole very quickly.”
