As finals week rapidly approaches, many students are hitting the books, but the women’s basketball team is hitting the court and hitting it hard. After beating nationally-ranked Hope (18) and Thomas Moore (17) on the road earlier in the season, Capital (5-2, 1-1 Ohio Athletic Conference) broke into the top 25 teams in the nation.
Coach Dixie Jeffers feels good about this team, and she has the experience to know when a team is special. Jeffers is a former OAC coach of the year, and a back-to-back national coach of the year in 1993-94 and 1994-95. She is also the only current coach to be enshrined in the Ohio Basketball Hall of Fame, and is the sixth coach in NCAA Division III history with over 500 victories.
“I feel very good about this season. We defeated ranked teams on the road, and we played very well and consistent. We had a bit of a letdown at Wilmington, but we had played six games in 10 days. We’d played so many games so quickly we didn’t have much time to fix things. Now we can build depth and fix problems,” Jeffers said.
Capital rebounded from a 30-49 loss at Wilmington with a route of John Carroll, 71-39. The team has many strengths, mostly on the defensive end of the ball. The team has the number-one ranked scoring defense in the OAC thus far, allowing just 47.9 points per game.
“We rebound well, defensively we’re good, and our chemistry is great. They play off of one another,” Jeffers said.
Capital’s next game is Dec. 10 at Mount Union. The next home game played when school is in session is Jan. 14 against Muskingum, though the women do play six games over break.
“Every time out you want to win, but you can’t win everything, so we look to grow. We want to be in that title game. We want to build championships. If we play like we did early, they could very much win the OAC and vie for an NCAA bid. We have such a great tradition that we always have a target on our backs and get everyone’s A game, but that will pay off towards the end of the year,” Jeffers said.
While many students are off at home, crashing to catch up on sleep that they didn’t get this week, the women’s basketball team will be crashing the board to keep-up their run with hope of becoming OAC champions.
