Wesleyan Basketball Prepares For Regular Season Finale

Image courtesy of Kodiak Creative

BLOOMINGTON, Ill.- Illinois Wesleyan Women’s basketball’s final game of the regular season will occur this Saturday against Augustana. Their last match up against Augustana was January 15 and the team had won 81-48.

Even though the last time the Spartans faced in Augustana it was a 23 point victory. That margin isn’t the most important factor the next time you play the team.  Each game is different and assistant Coach Brian Ehresman brings up those ideas. 

 “The first time around is so much different than the second time around and when you do the comparing scores game it gets a little you know clouded at certain times. You don’t know, maybe they had people missing from COVID, maybe people didn’t shoot well that day but they are playing much better, they’re shooting better,” said Ehresman. 

The Spartans are on a 3-game winning streak after a close 65-63 victory against North Central on Tuesday night. Having a hot streak in sports in any capacity is difficult, then continuing that streak is even harder. Senior guard Brooke Lansford talks about her expectations for the season as a whole.

“I think for us it’s just, we came into the season not knowing what to expect and now we’re one win away from winning the CCIW. So for us it’s just we have this momentum, we just know it’s just one more game to accomplish our goals and so we’re putting all our energy and effort into that to reach that goal,” said Lansford.

COVID is still impacting sports to this day. After what seems to be an eternity hopefully in the near future, we can look at this in the rear view mirror. Yet the players and coaches have to move forward and adapt to each new situation that is presented to them

“We had some COVID issues earlier in the season, we played without two starters but for the most part we stayed pretty healthy and been able to keep our team, which we been super fortunate about but going into the other games you just don’t what the other team is going to have and so you prep like it’s going to be their full team but you may show up and it could something completely different. So I think we’ve just learned to deal with adversity and adapt and going to the game playing our hardest no matter what the other team brings,” said Johnson.

In the  game against North Central, Lauren Huber was the leader in points with 14, Mallory Powers with 9 rebounds and Brooke Lansford with 5 assists. The overall stat leader for the Spartans at this point of the season would include  Brooke Lansford is the leading scorer for the team with averaging 14.1 points per game. Then Lauren Huber is leading in rebounds 6.4 per game.

Following this upcoming game at Augustana, the Spartans will be going to the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin tournament starting February 22.