Early Tuesday evening only one thing separated the Waynesburg women’s basketball team from Thanksgiving break, a non-conference game against the Otterbein Cardinals.

Otterbein [4-1] came into the Rudy Marisa Fieldhouse and dominated the Yellow Jackets [1-4], 84-56.

Head coach Sam Jones wasn’t optimistic after the loss.

“It’s over. That’s the positive,” Jones said.

The loss was a tough one for the entire team. One major issue was rebounding, as the Jackets were out rebounded 45-25.

“We didn’t crash the boards at all. Our rebounding effort was not acceptable,” Jones said.

The Jackets gave Otterbein a plethora of offensive rebounds. The Cardinals scored 18 second-chance points. The Jackets…only four.

Jones and junior Andrea Orlosky both said that one of the biggest issues for the team was attention to detail.

“Where we were at the half we knew we needed to fix a few things and we just got worse on them,” Orlosky said.

At halftime, Waynesburg trailed by nine points, 34-25.

Early in the third quarter, the Jackets started to fight back, with sophomore Brooke Fuller leading the charge. Fuller, who was battling an illness during the game, managed to score 13 points, with 11 coming in the second half. She also led the team with five rebounds.

Allie Delaney was the Jackets leading scorer, and the only player besides Fuller to crack double digits in points, chipping in 15.  Delaney’s points primarily came from downtown, as she was 4-7 from three-point range.

One of the issues for Waynesburg defensively was defending the three-point shot. Otterbein shot 14-26 from beyond the arc.. Eleven of the 14 threes came from the hands of Abby Zerkle, who had six, and Angelia Jackson, who had five.

Waynesburg’s earliest lead was three points, and that was off of an Anika Dansby three just 10 seconds into the game. After the 7:30 mark in the opening quarter, Otterbein took the lead and never looked back.

Dansby has been a bright spot for the one-win Jackets, and she racked up four assists in the game. Another freshman, Zoie Smith, had nine points and two rebounds.

 “Zoie always impresses me,” Orlosky said. “The way she plays and holds herself up. She doesn’t look like a freshman player. She looks like shes been at it for a while,”  Orlosky said.

The Jackets get a small break, and then begin PAC play  Dec. 4 with a road trip to Grove City. Jones knows the team has  a lot of work to do after the loss to Otterbein.

“We’re going to find a way to up the intensity in practice. We need to make things more competitive,” Jones said.