Waynesburg University’s women’s basketball team picked up an 86-71 win over Westminster in the first round of the Presidents’ Athletic Conference tournament.

Head coach Sam Jones felt that his players embraced the postseason atmosphere of win or go home and took advantage of having a first round game at the Rudy Marisa Fieldhouse.

“I could feel there was a palatable difference in energy in the room for our players and on the court in general,” said Jones. “Baskets were celebrated more than they were in December. Conference playoffs are always different because you are playing someone for a third time, you know them pretty well by that time.”

Waynesburg was outscored 16-13 in the first quarter, but the Jackets fought back through the second and took a commanding 43-30 lead into the locker room at halftime.

“We took a little bit [of time] to adjust to their zone [defense],” said Jones. “We knew it was coming and we prepared for it, but we called a timeout and changed from one zone offense to the other and that was when we started to click a little bit.”

According to Jones, familiarity played a large part in the second half of the contest, as the Jackets already defeated Westminster twice in the regular season and were able to pick up some of the Titans top strategies and hold their frontcourt in check.

“We wanted to make them work really hard for every score,” said Jones. “We made [Emily] Fromknecht work hard for her baskets. She had 17 points, but I thought we made her work really hard. We wanted to make sure their shooters did not get any open looks and make them one dimensional, which we did a pretty good job on most of the evening.”

Keeping the Titans scorers in low numbers was a key defensively, but the Jackets were also able to score on the offensive end. The efforts were led by senior Rachel Eng and sophomore Erin Joyce, who both posted 17 points. Joyce matched her career-high in points in the game.

On offense, the 3-pointers fell a plethora of times, as the Jackets shot 14-of-27 from beyond the arc and moved the ball effectively.

“Offensively, we wanted to have good, fast ball movement and take the right shot, which [led to] 25 assists on 30 made baskets, I thought our ball movement was fantastic,” said Jones.

The Jackets went on to score the same amount of points in the second half as the first— 43—enough to go on and defeat the Titans by 15 points.

Moving ahead to the quarterfinal round, the Jackets will have to prepare for another familiar opponent in Grove City, who they split the season series with. The quick turnaround from Monday allowed Jones to focus on a couple of Wolverine tendencies.

“Grove City has heavy pressure, full-court,” said Jones. “They are very good at it, and so we just have to make sure we are ready to beat that press. Also, [we have to] make sure we don’t have a lot of silly turnovers that lead to easy baskets.”

Waynesburg played the fourth seeded Wolverines on Wednesday night.  The game was passed deadline for print.