The Saint Louis University women’s basketball team fell at the hands of La Salle at home Sunday, Feb. 10, 61-42.
The Billikens dropped to 9-15 overall and 4-5 in Atlantic 10 play with the loss.
“The score speaks for itself,” Women’s Basketball Coach Shimmy Gray-Miller said. “I’m disappointed in the way we played.”
Gray-Miller said that she thought the Bills had a great opportunity to showcase how much they have improved with the game being on television, but that the team took a step backwards with the loss.
“I can handle losing if the effort is there, but the effort just wasn’t there,” Gray-Miller said. “We took the day off on Monday [Feb 11] and got back at it with a tough practice Tuesday [Feb. 12]. We’ll do that again this week and try to turn things around for Saturday.”
Gray-Miller said she thought freshman Lauren Woods played smart against La Salle. Woods led the Bills with 10 points off the bench.
“Woods started the season off well, but got slowed down by a couple stress fractures in her leg,” Gray-Miller said. “It has taken a couple games for her to get her timing back, but we are a much better team when she’s playing.”
The Bills, who have lost their last two games, will look to end that skid against the University of Massachusetts (11-12, 3-5) on Saturday. The two teams have split their only two meetings, with UMass winning last year and the Bills winning two years ago.
“UMass is a very upper-class, heavy team,” Gray-Miller said. “They have two of the best scorers in the conference, and they are a very smart and versatile team. They have a lot of players that can shoot from outside and post up inside.”
Gray-Miller said UMass’ size will not intimidate the team in preparing for this weekend. Four guys that are on the practice squad, who are bigger than the SLU’s starters, will “do a great job of being UMass this week,” Gray-Miller said.
Gray-Miller said that a win against UMass would help push the Bills in the right direction heading into the final stretch of the regular season.
“We really need to win to get back on track,” Gray-Miller said. “If we do not play our style of basketball first, it doesn’t matter if we are playing UMass or the Los Angeles Lakers.”
