The Waynesburg University women’s basketball team finished the weekend with a convincing 83-61 victory over the Theil Tomcats this past Saturday, Dec. 9.

Coming into the game, the Jackets (5-3, 3-1) needed a win to stay unbeaten at home. Thanks to a combination of Jacket scorers, they were able to obtain that goal.

Senior forward Addy Knetzer paced the Waynesburg offense with 21 points and 11 rebounds, completing her second straight double-double. Senior forward Mackenna Drazich also added 17 points and eight rebounds to the cause, while junior Anna Bartman went 4-for-6 from floor and 3–for-5 from beyond the arc totaling 11 points off the bench.

Head coach Sam Jones was pleased with the offensive effort from his team.

“I was really happy with our ball movement, we had 22 assists on 32 made shots, so that shows we were moving the ball particularly well and that always makes us pretty hard to guard,” said Jones.

Waynesburg had tough a time containing the leading scorer in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference, Jess Vormelker, who finished with 30 points, but was able to contain the rest of the team with the Thiel’s second leading scorer, Taylor Duchon, who was averaging 14.4 points per game, out with an injury.

“We knew that she was going to get her points, she’s a great player and we really just talked about making her work for all of them and I thought we did a really nice job of that,” said Jones.

At the end of the first quarter the Yellow Jackets led the Tomcats 23-8. By the end of the first half Thiel went on an 11-2 run that changed the score to 40-25.

However, in the third quarter there was a little bit of a drop off in intensity from the Jacket women.

“We just came out sloppy and needed to be reminded that that was not a great idea,” said Jones. “I thought we responded well though.”

A spot of emphasis throughout the game was the team’s 3-point shooting. The team completed 40 percent of its attempts from beyond the arc (10-of-25).

“It creates more space on the floor for driving lanes and they went to the zone to try and stop our inside game,” Jones said. “That was the point—to kind of force them out of their zone and open it back up so we could back inside.”

Jones was also pleased with the effort from his senior leaders.

“Mackenna has always been a really hard worker and a great team player, so she just really leads by example and she is always geared up and ready to go and right now she is playing particularly well,” said Jones. “[Addy] is rebounding particularly well right now and I thought she did a really nice job defensively because she had to be all over the place.”

Throughout the game the Yellow Jacket offense never faltered as they outscored the Tomcats in all four quarters, with the largest lead being 24 points.

Waynesburg’s next five games will be played on the road and their next competition will be on Tuesday, Dec. 19, at Carnegie Mellon. Tip-off is scheduled for 2 p.m.