The ball is on the court again as the men’s and women’s basketball teams are starting off their seasons. The weekend of Nov. 18, the men’s team had a couple of losses against Crown University and North Central University up in Minnesota.
During their game with UW-Whitewater on Nov. 21, the men were defeated with a score of 93-79. On the other side of the court, the women’s basketball team recently faced off against UW Platteville where they lost 83 – 74. The women’s team is currently sitting with a record of 2-2 while the men’s team has a score of 1-4. Both teams are working to improve their performances despite the shaky start.
Part of the reason for the shaky start for the women’s team has to do with the new roles players on the team had to take on.
“The first game was definitely a big shock for a lot of us,” Fifth-Year Macy Beinborn said. “This was because of the new roles we had to play. For a lot of people, they knew that they were gonna have to step up…. Then we like to come to our senses, and I think everyone’s kind of settled in.”
Despite their current score, both teams are aiming high and looking to win the conference and make a run at nationals this year.
“Our goal is always to win,” junior Chase Larsen said. “We want to win the conference championship and make a run in the national tournament. We are hyper-focused on that goal and all believe that we have the ability to do it.”
As well as winning, the men’s team is looking forward to improving different parts of their game from the previous season.
“We have to make a handful of improvements if we want to be better this year,” Larsen said.
We obviously did not perform to standard last season. This year we have to do a better job of consistently playing with intensity. We did it in stretches last year, but our lack of consistency resulted in more losses than wins.”
Similar to the men’s team, the women’s team is looking to be successful this season by improving their skills at practice each day. Junior Emma Berg believes that working on small improvements each day will help them improve their game in the long run.
“One goal is to get 1% better every day,” Berg said. “I think that one thing that’s overlooked sometimes is just making small improvements every day with the little things and that is something that we’ve been getting better at.”
One way the women’s team is looking to improve their skills is by improving their ball handling and working on not having many turnovers. Head Coach Mark Beinborn, who has been Augustana women’s basketball team’s head coach for 11 years, believes it is their biggest issue so far.
“On the court, it just comes to us taking better care of the ball,” Beinborn said. “Turnovers were our Achilles heel last year, and we got it down and decreased them as the year went on… Ultimately, when we lost in the conference championship, game turnovers were the deciding factor. So that is a big goal for us to improve on that.”
Looking at the next games for both teams, the men’s basketball team plays University Wisconsin Stevens Point on Sunday, Nov. 26. The women’s basketball team is traveling to St. Louis to play Webster University on Saturday, Nov. 25.