The women’s basketball team fell 71-39 to Kenyon College on Saturday, Jan. 21 in the second round of conference play this season.

“We did a much better job with our team defense [this game]. Our biggest issue in the Kenyon game was our shooting percentage and our ability to consistently score throughout,” said Head Coach Kate Costanzo. “Kenyon has a high-powered offense, and they did a good job hitting open shots when they had them. We prevented them from driving by us which was much better, but we did give up a lot of threes.”

Costanzo said rebounding and giving Kenyon second chances were obstacles throughout the game.

“We had a lot of our players back from injury, so incorporating them into the game was an advantage,” said forward Olivia Barkley, ’19. “I think our help defense was better, we did better on being one pass away. Our shot selection was a lot better, we just had issues scoring and issues getting out on the shooters and rebounding.”

Amanda Beebe, ’18, guard, recently returned to playing for the team following a knee injury.

“We’ve been growing as a team in general because we’re so young. I didn’t play in the first game we played against Kenyon because I was injured, but I know having me back was a different aspect we didn’t have,” Beebe said.

Following the Kenyon game, Barkley said the team is looking to be more competitive against conference teams in the second round of play.

“The biggest take away was that we need to get better with one-on-one defense, and we realized that we have a lot of the teams left to play in the conference for the second time, and we need to rack up as many wins as possible to prepare us for playoffs,” Barkley said.

After falling to Kenyon in the second game against them this season, Costanzo said the team had a meeting to refocus themselves before continuing with games.

“The first run-through, we only got one win, and obviously we want to improve on that, and we know we can improve on that,” Costanzo said. “Kenyon is one of the strongest teams in our conference. They’re the same team that they were last year. I think [the players] need to look at Kenyon and realize that they can be playing like that if we’re passing and making good passes to open teammates and we’re shooting confidently.”

The women will travel to Hiram College on Saturday, Jan. 28 at 1 p.m.