Independent Student Newspaper of UW Oshkosh Campuses

The Advance-Titan

Independent Student Newspaper of UW Oshkosh Campuses

The Advance-Titan

Independent Student Newspaper of UW Oshkosh Campuses

The Advance-Titan

Basketball wins first two games

The UW Oshkosh women’s basketball team opened its season with a pair of wins on Nov. 13 at home against Edgewood College and on the road against Anderson University (Ind.) on Nov. 15.

The sixth- ranked Titans defeated the Eagles 81-53 and the Ravens 70-52.

The only seniors on the team are Marissa Selner and Ashley Neustifter, and they were both a part of the starting five for the Titans. The starting five is usually the same five girls throughout the season, dependent on injuries and illness, but this year Neustifter said head coach Brad Fischer is going use different lineups in certain situations.

“As of right now I’m in the starting lineup,” Neustifter said. “But throughout the season he’s going to have a different starting five that matches up with the opposing teams starting five.”

Fischer said he and the team were happy to earn a couple wins, but understand they have a lot of work to do to improve.

“We have a pretty experienced team, but we have a lot of people taking on new roles with increased responsibilities,” Fischer said. “We will have to be more disciplined and efficient going forward if we’re going to reach our potential. My hope is that we can learn from the mistakes we did make the first weekend and see why some of the things we spend a lot of time talking about are important.”

Selner said she recognized most of her mistakes after the first game.

“I personally don’t think I did as well as I could have,” Selner said. “I missed five of my free throws, and that means that I have areas of improvement.”

Neustifter said as a team, they were able to communicate well and get a lot of freshmen on the court, but there are obvious areas to improve on.

“Sunday’s game really exposed us as to what we need to prepare,” Neustifter said. “We got to see what we need to work on, but Sunday’s game really showed us what our weaknesses are.”

Fischer said the team needs to be its own critic this year if they are going to push themselves to reach their potential.

“We have the potential to be a very good basketball team, but I think our girls recognize we have a lot of room to improve,” Fischer said. “The good part is we had different people step up each game and I think that will be a strength of our team. We believe we have a lot of different players who can lead us on a given night and I hope that makes us difficult to prepare for.”

Selner said the team is going to work on what the games showed them over the first two games.

“I’m probably going to work on finishing the contact,” Selner said. “By that I mean being more aggressive in blocking.”

The Titans will be traveling to Wheaton, Illinois where they will play Defiance College on Nov. 20 and St. Mary’s College on Nov. 21.

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