Women's basketball

The Buffalo State women's basketball team suffered two losses this weekend, losing a heart-breaker in overtime to New Paltz Friday, 71-69, and to Oneonta 59-43 Saturday.

With both losses, the team could easily point to one area of concern - turnovers. The Bengals turned the ball over 28 times on Friday, resulting in 14 New Paltz points.

"It all comes down to execution within the offense," said head coach Sue Roarke. "In both games you look at the score and we were in both games. Imagine if we just cut our turnovers in half."

On Friday, after scoring the first basket of the game, the Bengals never led for the rest of regulation and trailed by as many as 12 in the second half.
 

From there, they stormed back and managed to tie the game on a buzzer-beater by Bianca Smiley at the end of regulation to force overtime, with the game tied at 60.
 

The Bengals scored the first seven points in overtime and led by as many as five with a minute remaining. New Paltz then proceeded to score on consecutive possessions including a three to tie, and then added two late free throws to pull out the nail-biter.
 

"In that situation I think we showed that we were a young team" said forward Ashley Wallace. "We have some new players that haven't been put in that situation before, so it was tough."
 

"It was a tough loss, especially because they are in first place," guard Kelly Kell added. "It would've been nice to at least split the season series with them."
 

Wallace led the Bengals with her seventh career double-double, finishing with 20 points and 10 rebounds on 8-of-16 shooting. Smiley added a double-double of her own with 14 points and 14 rebounds.
 

Saturday, the Bengals came out flat and trailed by as many as 14 points in the first half. They followed that with just 17 points in the second half, leading to their lowest offensive outing of the season with 43.
 

After trailing by 14, the Bengals went on a 13-1 run to close the deficit to 28-26 at halftime. The Red Dragons then went on an 11-1 run to start the second and never looked back.
 

Alicia Bowman led the Bengals with nine points and 10 rebounds in 18 minutes off the bench, while Smiley registered eight points and 13 rebounds. Kell added eight points and eight rebounds.
 

"We didn't get the ball inside enough and we were sloppy with the ball," Kell said. "I felt we weren't aggressive enough, especially in the first half, and when we realized how to break down their zone, it was too late."

"I felt we were drained from Friday's game," Wallace said. "We definitely didn't come out with as much heart as we did Friday and it really hurt us, especially on the offensive side."
 

The Bengals owned the boards, outrebounding Oneonta 57-37, but shot a dismal 25 percent from the field, including missing all 10 of their 3-point attempts.
 

"Too many turnovers and not enough shots going in for us," Roarke said. "Our offense was very stagnant in terms of movement off the ball and I felt their weak-side defense presence is what duped us into so many turnovers."
 

The Bengals turned the ball over 26 times, leading to 13 points, and they had no points in the paint.
 

"We've got to do a better job taking care of the ball, plain and simple," Roarke said. "I thought we did an okay job in the beginning of the season, got better half way through and now we seem to be back where we were in the beginning."

Kell, a point guard, took part of the responsibility for the high turnover numbers over the weekend.
 

"I have to do a better job handling the ball, and it starts with me looking to get the ball down low and putting players in better positions to score," she said.
 

The Bengals (11-11/7-8 SUNYAC) now have two games left in SUNYAC play, and they are fighting for positioning in the conference tournament.
 

"We have (two) games remaining and we have put ourselves in a position where we need to win," Kell said. "It's going to be hard, but we have to do it in order to get into the SUNYAC Tournament."
 

Aubrey Gibert can be reached by email at gibert.record@live.com.