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Jan. 8—AIKEN — Wednesday night's loss to Columbus State is going to hurt for the USC Aiken women's basketball team.
The Pacers battled for 40 minutes against the 19th-ranked team in the country and were left lamenting the missed opportunities they let slip away in a 70-57 loss to keep them winless in Peach Belt Conference play.
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It's a loss that stung, and one they have to let sting, but that's a good thing. It's a sting that reminds them that they had a chance to pull off a big win, and it reminds them that they're on the right track.
If they didn't care, it wouldn't hurt. Now it's back to work to find ways to turn the positive elements they see on the court into positive results in the standings, and their next opportunity is at 1:30 p.m. Saturday against Georgia College at the Convocation Center.
"Super proud of the way the team fought tonight," said first-year head coach Brittany Batts. "It felt like a full 40 (minutes). We were giving all-out effort. I felt like we played together as a team. We found ways to turn in to each other. Obviously, mistakes were made. It's a basketball game. There's no perfect basketball game. But I felt like, no matter what, I was coaching a team out there that wanted to be on the court, wanted to play together, and they were giving us their full effort every single time. Super proud of the effort we gave tonight."
The middle portions of the game were where Columbus State (11-2, 5-1 PBC) gained separation. Defensive lapses led to some key 3-pointers in the second quarter as the Cougars turned a tie game into an eight-point halftime lead, and 11 missed free throws in the third quarter kept the Pacers (3-11, 0-6) from chipping away at the deficit.
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Otherwise, the defense hounded a high-scoring Columbus State offense into missed shots, limiting the number of times the Cougars could set up their back-court pressure defense. And when the Cougars did press, the Pacers didn't panic.
"Offensively, we just came out super aggressive," explained junior guard Morgan McDermott, who scored a team-high 16 points. "Once we saw their press, we just wanted to attack it."
USCA forced 19 turnovers, scored 26 points in the paint and pulled down 14 offensive rebounds. The Pacers held Columbus State to 37.7% shooting despite that 50% second quarter, and they scored 21 points on the fast break.
One of the main benefactors of the Pacers' press-breaking was redshirt-sophomore guard Ioanna Stefanaki, who knocked down three 3-pointers on her way to a 13-point outing.
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"I just feel like we broke the press good, so we got those extra passes," she said. "My teammates gave me the ball, and I was able to hit those shots."
Freshman forward Mackenna Nix was again in double-double territory with 11 points and eight rebounds, junior guard Destiny Harman went 4-for-6 from the field and scored nine points, junior forward Monique Emelifeonwu grabbed seven rebounds, and junior forward Zenia Palaska and redshirt-junior guard Mahkayla Premo pulled down six boards apiece.
Up next is Georgia College on Saturday, giving the Pacers a couple of days to get back to the drawing board and find ways to get better as a team and come together more in order to get stronger overall. There will be plenty to draw, both good and bad, from Wednesday night against a nationally-ranked opponent to apply moving forward.
"We prepare for any opponent. Every game is a big game because we're representing USC Aiken. It's an opportunity to play basketball, so it wasn't much different than any other game," Batts said. "We talked about attacking; we always talk about attacking. We always want to attack the rim. We have a lot of different ways in which we want to do that. And then we talked about our defense, how we want to play defensively. I felt like the team was locked in defensively for a majority of this game, so super proud of that. Felt they executed a lot of things that we talked about in practice, so super proud of how they focused and got that done."
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