In a battle for first place in the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference standings, the Trinity University women’s basketball team suffered two straight losses this past weekend against Texas Lutheran University and Schreiner University.

The Tigers fell to 17-7 on the season and 9-4 in conference play. Texas Lutheran took over first place in the standings by improving to 18-5 (10-2 SCAC) on the year, while Schreiner improved to 14-10 overall and tied Trinity with a 9-4 SCAC mark.  Trinity and Schreiner are currently tied with Southwestern for the second spot in the SCAC standings.

“Of course, our goals are to win and we still want to win the rest of regular conference games, but with the losses in the back of our minds it will help us push further to win and to dominate in the future games,” said head women’s basketball coach Cameron Hill.

On Friday, Feb. 14th, the Tigers led 72-64 with 5:20 to play, but the Bulldogs scored the final 10 points of the game to pull off the upset.  Trinity missed its final eight shots in the game, as well as committing two turnovers down the stretch.

Trinity led by as many as 21 points in the first half, jumping out to a 13-0 lead to start the game.  The Tigers were up 44-29 at the half, and looked to be in control before suffering a tough ending to the game.

Sophomore forward Anecia Richardson led three Trinity players in double figures with 24 points in the game, hitting 10-18 shots, and pulling down eight rebounds.

“In order to prepare for our games we start warm-up an hour before our actual game time. We have our pre-game talk with our coaches and discuss the other team’s strengths and how we are going to attack them. We also like to watch our own film to see what areas we can improve and what our strengths are so we can maximize those during game play,” Richardson said.

Senior forward Libby Kruse led all players with 14 rebounds for the Tigers, as well as dishing out a game-high six assists.  Senior guard Murphy Burns added nine points, while junior guard Lauren Splawn and junior center Taylor Hollins chipped in with six points each off the bench.

“We take each game at time and win or lose. Our primary goal is to get to post-conference play. Each team experiences some type of adversity, and those three losses for us will just make reaching our goal that much sweeter,” Hollins said.

Schreiner shot better than 50 percent from the field in the game on Saturday, Feb. 15, including a blistering 57.7 percent in the second half of play.  The Tigers trailed 34-36 at intermission, but turned that around for a four-point lead (40-36) early in the second.

The two teams went back and forth for most of the second period, but six unanswered points from Schreiner made it a 63-55 game with five minutes to play.  The Tigers fought back to within five, but the Mountaineers pushed the lead to 10 points with a minute remaining to seal the win.

Trinity finishes the regular season with a game at Southwestern University on Friday, Feb. 21.  The Tigers will host the eight-team SCAC Tournament the following weekend, with the three-day event beginning on February 28.