Photo by: Michael Furman
The women’s basketball team earned the No. 4 seed in the Sun Belt Conference tournament after winning the final three games of the regular season.
DU will play No. 13 seed Louisiana Monroe in the first round.
The tournament starts on Saturday at 9:45 a.m. in Hot Springs, Ark.
Last Saturday, the Pioneers (17-12, 12-6 SBC) clinched the fourth spot when they beat the Louisiana Lafayette, 76-63, in their regular season finale.
The Pioneers have relied on defense late in the season to pick up key wins, but stress that an offensive factor is pivotal to their success.
“At this point we are really focusing on polishing up our game,” said sophomore Kaetlyn Murdoch. “Minimizing turnovers has been our main focus all season long and something we need to improve on.”
Head coach Erik Johnson agrees, “Our margin for error is very thin, we cannot afford having anybody in foul trouble or an off shooting night.”
The main reason for this small margin for error is that the Pioneers have a limited bench and need to have all their players contributing.
All five starters average more than 30 minutes a game this season and three of the five are averaging more than 14 points per game.
“Consistency has been huge for us this season,” said Johnson. “Brianna Culberson, Kaetlyn Murdoch and Britteni Rice have provided the bulk of our scoring this season and we need to have all the components in our starting lineup to continue being consistent and if that happens in the tournament then it is anybody’s ball game.”
As the No. 4 seed, the Pioneers are looking up at the SBC’s three best teams.
Arkansas-Little Rock and Middle Tennessee each have one-loss conference records, 17-1 and have wrapped the tournaments top seeds.
Western Kentucky, who beat DU earlier this season, 73-70, in Magness Arena, has clinched the other first round bye and is the No. 3 seed.
“UALR and MTU are the class of the field and are borderline top 25 teams,” said Johnson. “WKU is the other team and we had them earlier this season at home, but we lost the lead and had a chance to tie it at the end of the game.”
Johnson said this is the time of the year where teams play one game a time, but he is looking ahead to what can be intriguing match ups for the Pioneers.
“If we get by our first round game we expect to see Florida Atlantic in the quarterfinals and then we hope to get a rematch in the semifinals against UALR,” said Johnson.
Although limiting turnovers is being stressed in their post-season preparations, the Pioneers have not forgotten what has made them successful this season.
“We are one of the top teams in the conference in field goal percentage and stopping other teams from having a good field goal percentage,” said Murdoch. “Rebounding is a big key, because our goal is to stop the other team from having extra possessions, while maximizing our total possessions.”
In last Saturday’s win, the Pioneers shot 55.8 percent from the field, while limiting their opponent to shooting 36.8 percent.
In a conference tournament with some pretty tough competition, the Pioneers realize they can’t rely on other teams mistakes for a victory.
“Right now we are focusing on the things we can control,” said Culberson.
“We need to change a few things and improve on a couple things in order to compete in the conference tournament.”
Although they must travel, the Pioneers will be playing at a neutral site, which should even out the playing field.
However, top-seeded UALR, 24-5 overall, only has to travel around an hour to get to the tournament.
“Traveling is all about comfort level,” said Johnson. “It’s nice playing in Denver, but we don’t really care where we play, because we do a nice job on the road.”
Despite the disadvantage of a long travel, the players are not too concerned about playing their postseason games in Arkansas.
The Pioneers enter the SBC tournament as winners of their last three road games.
They finished with a 6-3-conference road record.
“Traveling isn’t much of a concern,” said Murdoch. “Give us the ball and a court and we are good to go.”
