UW Oshkosh’s women’s basketball team regained its footing, winning its past three games after a trio of losses. The two most recent games took place on Dec. 29 and 30.

The first game was fought against Washington University in St. Louis, with the Titans winning 78-42.

A contributing factor to the win was ball handling by Oshkosh on offense, as they only had 11 turnovers to WUSL’s 23. The Titans also had a three-point percentage of 45.2%.

Player Kayce Vaile said that the team took advantage of their break in order to benefit their mentality.

“Over the break, as a team we had a ton of discussions about competing and being the toughest team out there,” she said. “These last few games have shown that we can bring it whenever we step onto the court.” 

The Titans continued to bring it on the court against Ripon College the following day, beating the Redhawks 61-53, and taking a second win over the weekend.

Vaile attributed the win to the mentality between games that allowed them to adapt to the competition.

“Between the game we knew that improvements on the offensive end were needed,” she said. “Ripon was also a completely different animal than WUSL. Ripon is well rounded, experienced and smaller than WUSL, which is strong, bigger and aggressive. Going into Ripon, we knew we were going to have long defensive possessions so improving on finishing plays and giving no second chances for them on offense was a big focus for us.”

UWO women’s basketball will next compete against UW-Eau Claire on Jan. 4 at home, a game that Vaile said would test the team and their capabilities.

“Eau Claire is a good test for us to see if we can keep competing and carry the success we had in non-conference play back into conference,” she said. “We did not have the best start to conference play, but now is our chance to change that. Eau Claire is a good team and it’s going to take everyone on our team to get us ready to play on Wednesday night.”