Youth and inexperience leaving Rider stranded

By Kristie Kahl

In spite of a regular season chock-full of turmoil and disappointment, the women’s basketball team continues to use its shortcomings as a learning experience in order to dramatically improve its play on the court.

With a roster composed predominately of underclassmen – five freshman and five sophomores, with only two juniors and two seniors – Rider’s record has dropped alarmingly to 1-20 overall. They are also winless in the MAAC (0-10) following an 87-55 loss at conference rival Siena (5-15 overall, 4-6 MAAC) Monday night.

“Teams are just annihilating us,” Head Coach Tori Harrison told GoBroncs.com. “We’re young and the other teams are comprised of mostly juniors and seniors but our kids have to understand that eventually they have to want to compete and we’re not doing that.”

A growing concern continues to be the team’s weak performances in the beginning of games. Against Siena, for example, Rider quickly fell behind 11-0 in the first four minutes of the game. The deficit grew to 20 points with 1:39 to play and by intermission, the Saints led comfortably by 18.

But the Broncs – who tend to cut their opponents’ leads throughout the game only to fall short in the end – responded swiftly with their customary second half run. By scoring eight of the game’s first 10 points after halftime, Rider cut Siena’s 47-29 lead down to 49-37 before the Saints put the game out of reach with a 17-10 run over the next six minutes.

Freshman center Stephanie Wisniewski led the Broncs with 12 points and five rebounds and freshman forward Ashley Anderson scored 11 off the bench. The Peahens shot 54 percent for the game and out-rebounded Rider, 45-22.

“It’s not great, but we’re definitely making improvements,” said freshman center Ilda Llamas. “We just have to keep our heads up and keep fighting because that’s what we do.”

On Saturday, the team’s aggressive spirit nearly staged an upset win over visiting Saint Peter’s (SPC) at Sovereign Bank Arena. Surprisingly, Rider used a 10-2 run early in the game to take an 18-15 lead midway through the first half. The game was deadlocked 29-29 by the end of the game’s first 20 minutes and again 41-41 with 14:05 left to play before SPC (9-10 overall, 5-5 MAAC) pulled away for good with a 10-0 run.

Although the team attributes the bulk of its defeats to its age, it maintains the best has yet to come.

“I think we’ve done really well for the fact that we have a lot of freshmen,” said Llamas. “We just have to limit our turnovers, but besides that, we’ve turned everything around. We’ve increased our rebounding defensively and offensively and our shooting percentage has also increased this season.”

As the team puts the past behind them, they will continue to move forward with the improvements they have made thus far.

“We’ve made great progress so far,” said Llamas. “We just have to stick with it, work hard, and hope things turn around.”

Rider will face off at second-place Iona (13-8 overall, 8-2 MAAC) tonight in a key conference game.