The USM women were busy over break. While most of us were away with family, food and drink, the Huskies were ascending the national rankings – all the way to 15th in country. But now, in the rigors of conference play, the Huskies are clawing to gain traction and stop a mid-season plunge in conference play.
Coach Mike McDevitt’s squad tore through the early part of the season, amassing a 12-1 record with their only loss coming to a solid Mary Hardin-Baylor squad during their winter trip to Texas.
But since that start, which included wins over teams like Keene State and Bowdoin College, the Huskies have found themselves on the losing side of games against Western Connecticut, Keene State and Rhode Island College.
The recent rough patch started with a surprising loss to Rhode Island College, where the Anchormen shot their way to a 72-64 overtime victory. McDevitt calls the game a “perfect storm,” noting RIC’s uncanny ability to knock down shots.
Immediately following this upset loss, USM suffered one equally as surprising to Western Connecticut who beat the Huskies by 15 points, 66-41, a testament to the amount of parity in this year’s LEC field.
“We didn’t play like ourselves, we didn’t play with confidence [against Western Connecticut],” Senior captain Nicole Paradis (Skowhegan) said.
But, keeping in line with the ups and downs of one of the nation’s best conferences, the Huskies bounced back to an authoritative win, thrashing a lesser UMass-Boston team 69-44.
This last weekend, the Huskies looked to continue their strong play against rival Keene State, who they beat handedly earlier in the season.
No such luck. The Huskies dropped yet another game – this time 66-44, sliding their conference mark to 4-3.
But with a new coach and a host of new faces, the Huskies are still poised to make a run at the LEC title. If they want to achieve that goal, however, they’ll need to learn from past experiences in conference play, a sentiment that Captain Stacy Kent (Northwood, NH) has tried to instill in her teammates.
“You learn the most from your losses. We’ve learned and those losses are in the past,” the Huskies leading scorer said.
With any luck the Huskies have gleaned can help them in their upcoming games. A pleasant surprise thus far has been the offensive prowess of Kaylee Demillo (Jay), whose 13 points a game has been the perfect compliment to the well-established scoring attack of Kent and Paradis. Demillo has led the Huskies in scoring in four of the last five games, including scoring outbursts of 29 and 23 against Rhode Island College and Eastern Connecticut respectively.
USM looks to put an end to their LEC woes when they play host to Plymouth State (Tuesday) and UMass-Dartmouth (Saturday) this week.