It’s late February, and the men’s basketball team is fighting for a spot in the Atlantic Sun Conference Tournament, while the women’s team is fighting to stay in first place in the A-Sun South. Both teams are in different situations, but both teams are just concerned with improving.
Even though the Lady Owls had plenty to cheer about after their 75-63 victory over conference rival Georgia State on Feb. 8, Head Coach Chancellor Dugan wanted her team to play better down the stretch.
“We did some silly things that we’ve got to make sure that we correct in practice,” Dugan said.
The Lady Owls had a 17-point lead with eight minutes left in the game. Then they committed eight fouls and eight turnovers in those last eight minutes. The Panthers made seven of the 12 free throws they got from the fouls.
Coach Dugan wants her team to know how to play with a lead in the future.
“I hope we’re in a lot of situations where we have a lead down the stretch, where we’ve got to play a lot smarter than what we did,” Dugan said.
There was still a lot to cheer about in that victory. FAU out-rebounded Georgia State 49-32. Also, the Lady Owls won, despite the fact that their leading scorer, forward Tamica Pierce, only put up two points.
The win was the fourth in a row for FAU. This winning streak began with victories at Samford and Belmont. Like the Georgia State game, the Lady Owls battled adversity in these two contests.
They trailed by as many as 13 points in the first half against Samford, but battled back in the second half and won the game 60-46. The Lady Owls held off a late run versus Belmont, thanks to shooting a perfect 16 of 16 from the free throw line in the final seven minutes. Coach Dugan said her team showed mental toughness in those two road victories.
While the Lady Owls try to improve as the conference tournament approaches, the men’s team is trying to get on a winning streak to qualify for the conference tournament.
They’ve put together a two-game winning streak with victories over Gardner-Webb and Campbell on Feb. 1 and Feb. 4, and they’re playing better basketball than they did in their losses to Samford and Belmont.
Although they shot poorly versus Gardner-Webb, the Owls were able to win the game in the closing seconds on a tip in by center Nick Neumann.
In the Campbell game, six Owls scored in double figures. They out-shot, out-rebounded, and committed fewer turnovers than the Camels.
Although they didn’t play perfectly in those two victories, they showed continued improvement from the two loses to Belmont and Samford.
In the first half of both losses, they were outscored 68-35. After those games, Head Coach Sidney Green was just concerned with his team playing 40 minutes of competitive basketball. They improved versus Campbell and Belmont, and they’re still improving.
In order to have a shot at qualifying for the conference tournament, they need to win as many of the rest of their games as possible and hope that the other teams in their conference lose some of their conference games.
The men’s and the women’s basketball teams are obviously in very different situations.
