One goal of the game of basketball is to limit the opponent’s ability to score in transition. For head women’s basketball coach Sam Jones, this was the main flaw in Waynesburg University’s effort  96-79 loss to Case Western Reserve last night. 

Although Jones said the Jackets eventually made necessary adjustments in their transition defense, overall, he wasn’t pleased with the execution. 

“I guess the one mildly encouraging thing is that after giving up 8,000 transition in the first half; and you can quote the 8,000 because that’s what it felt like, we managed to slow them down a little bit in the second half and not give up the transition points that we gave up,” Jones said. “That was key that we made that adjustment finally.”

However, it was too little too late for the Jackets, who have started the 2019-20 season with three straight losses.

“We still need to improve on attention to detail, knowing what we are doing, what we are in, we need to improve on learning from our mistakes,” Jones said. “We can’t keep making the same mistake over and over and over again.”

Aside from transition points, Jones was also unhappy with Jacket turnovers. While they only turned the ball over 16 times, it was the type of turnovers they committed that upset Jones.

“The turnover number wasn’t high, but they were all unforced turnovers, turnovers we don’t need to be making,” Jones said. “We were giving away easy chances at hoops making poor decisions with the basketball and repeatedly making the same poor decisions.”

The major bright spot for the Jackets was freshman forward Zoie Smith, who scored 17 points in 28 minutes of play and was nine for 10 from the foul line. Smith also added eight rebounds.

“Zoie is a very smart player, she plays hard and she’s very versatile,” Jones said. “She has a great skill set in lots of areas on the floor and she’s just a high IQ player and plays really hard. Zoie has a lot of upside as we move forward for sure.”

Jones was impressed with his team’s performance from the foul line, converting on 15 of 19 attempts, but wants to see them draw more fouls moving forward.

“The frustrating part is that we got to the foul line 14 times in the first half,” Jones said. “We didn’t necessarily keep an attack mentality. Since we are shooting a good percentage in two of the three games that we’ve played, I would just like to see us try to get there a little more consistently and get those easy points.”

Senior guard Erin Joyce led the team in playing time with 31 minutes.  Jones noted that Joyce’s senior leadership will be key to team success moving forward.

“She’s just a kid that’s been there, done that,” Jones said. “She doesn’t get rattled too easily, she’s a good communicator on the floor helping other people know where they are supposed to be and she does that kind of stuff for us quite well.”

Overall, Jones believes the team is improving, but wants to see  more adjustments moving forward.

The Waynesburg women will face Houghton at 7 p.m. Friday night at home. The  Jackets look to pick up their first win on the young season.

“We are just a team searching for an identity right now,” Jones said. “We have to get a little bit better at the details and learning from our own mistakes moving forward.”