The Lorian LADY DU’S CONTINUE TO DOMINATE ON THE COURT

By JAKE SINATRA

The Loras Women’s Basketball team has had a fantastic start to the season for the second year in a row. Following two early losses to Northern Illinois University and Augustana College, the Lady Du’s have settled into a 17-4 record, with a strong 10-2 record in conference.

After following the highlights from their Florida trip on Twitter and Instagram, I was lucky enough to grab an interview with their head coach, Justin Heinzen, as well as Senior Cierra Bachmann and Junior Sami Martin.

Coach Heinzen’s team started the season with an unusual game: a division 1 matchup against Northern Illinois University. This is not a common occurrence. The only way to get into a game like this is to be invited. The final score was an 8861 loss, but this wasn’t important in Coach Heinzen’s eyes.

“You schedule those games not expecting to win a lot of those games, but you want to compete at a pretty high level,” Heinzen said. “I thought this was a team that could probably not just fold and get smashed by a team like that.” The confidence his players earned was not underserved, as they outscored their opponent 38-35 in the second half.

Coach Heinzen also viewed this game as a learning opportunity for their competition later in the year. “What they [NIU] do is expose any mistake that you make,” Heinzen observed. “They pushed our pace.”

Both Sami and Cierra agreed with this statement but had the same positive view of their struggles. When it came to transition plays, the team struggled. “They capitalize on those transition plays every time. If we turned the ball over, they would pick it up sprinting down the court,” Bachmann told me, jokingly following it with, “It was our first game; we were a bit out of shape.”

After playing a team like Northern Illinois, our Lady Du’s saw their toughest competition of the year but also learned how to make in-game adjustments that would help them succeed against teams in the ARC.

One of the deciding factors in a team’s success is player turnover. Graduating an entire starting five all at once can throw a wrench into a team’s success. Luckily for Coach Heinzen, his 19-4 team record last year only graduated one starter and