The Waynesburg women’s basketball team will hit the road Saturday and meet the Bethany Bison for one final regular season contest, with both squads looking to secure a higher seed heading into the Presidents’ Athletic Conference tournament next week.

The first meeting between the two squads Jan. 16 ended with a 69-61 Waynesburg victory, but the Yellow Jackets allowed 30 Bison points in the final quarter. Jones believes the zone defense helped his team build the commanding lead.

“That was the first game that we committed to do zone defense and so we played it the entire game, no questions asked,” said Jones. “I think that surprised them a little bit because it’s something you see hardly ever from us. I thought we did a really good job of keeping them out of rhythm.”

Bethany presents a few scoring threats, including senior Sammie Weiss, who averages 11.8 points per game. Weiss had 10 points in the team’s first meeting back in January. Jones said that her scoring coupled with the Bison size on defense and around the basket will be an area of focus for his team.

“They play very tough, have some grit,” said Jones. “Obviously, [Sammie] Weiss is an elite scorer when she gets going, so you don’t want to let her get to the rim for some easy hoops. They [also] have some size inside which is something we don’t have a lot of, so we have to be cautious of that and make sure our advantage on our end outweighs the advantage on theirs.”

Fundamentally, Jones said the Yellow Jackets must make sure they are crisp on both offense and defense.

“The attention to detail on offense, with spacing and screen setting,” said Jones. “If you don’t do it right, it looks pretty jumbled. And then defensively, rotations and communication, and just remembering to do those things.”

Heading into the weekend, some teams can make moves in the PAC standings in hopes of securing a higher seed for the tournament which begins next week. Jones, however, just wants his team to take care of what they can control.

“We’re in that unfortunate zone where we need help, we need a couple other teams to get a loss here or there to help us out in our quest of getting a little higher up the food chain,” said Jones. “So, really because of that we try not to look at it, but really we need to focus on taking care of our side of business. It’s all meaningless if we don’t do our side of business, it makes it simpler.”

With the regular season coming to a close, Jones reflected on the regular season and how the team didn’t form its identity until halfway through due to some issues the Yellow Jackets faced.

“It’s been an interesting year,” said Jones. “The roster’s been paired down by injury and people leaving and stuff like that, but really once all the dust settled from that stuff the season started. I feel that just now or two-three weeks ago we started to gel and figure out who we were with the nine of us that we have.”

Waynesburg will take the court for the final time during the regular season Saturday at 1 p.m. at Bethany College. The PAC tournament field will be set after the conclusion of the final game Saturday evening.

“We’re trying to continue to grow and we rely heavily with five of the nine being sophomores or younger,” Jones said. “I’m excited about the growth and that we’ve seen in ourselves how good we can be on any particular night.”