In a two-week stretch that saw a buzzer-beater finish for the Yeowomen and a tournament win for the Yeomen, both the men’s and women’s basketball teams enter the bulk of conference play with plenty to be proud of. In their most recent games Wednesday, the Yeowomen trounced the College of Wooster Fighting Scots 72–51, while the Yeomen dropped their second conference game to the Wittenberg University Tigers 78–65. Now, while both programs sit at 4–2 overall, the Yeowomen command a 2–0 conference record, while the Yeomen have yet to record a conference win.

“We are a good defensive team,” Yeowomen Head Coach Kerry Jenkins said. “We’ve been working the whole week on being focused … and focusing on [how] to keep moving forward.”

The Yeowomen established their momentum in the first quarter when they finished with a 18–13 lead against the Fighting Scots at The College of Wooster Wednesday. In the remainder of the first half, the Yeowomen held the Fighting Scots to only eight points while netting 17 of their, riding a comfortable 35–21 lead into the half. The pressure on the Fighting Scots only grew with each passing minute, as the Yeowomen gained a 21-point lead with just under five minutes left in the third quarter. Junior guard Alex Stipano notched in a career-high 28 points to help the Yeowomen finish with a season-high of 72 points to the Fighting Scots’ 51.

“The team and I are really pumped,” Stipano wrote in an email to the Review. “We focused when we needed to, executed on both sides of the court, stayed calm in a pressure situation, and came out with a great team win.”

Against the Baldwin Wallace University Yellow Jackets on Sunday, it was a 10-foot jump shot from senior captain Tyler Parlor that, with just seconds left in the game, clinched a 46–45 win for the Yeowomen. After trailing for much of the game, the Yeowomen had a valiant comeback in the final nine minutes that left the Yellow Jackets utterly flustered. The Yeowomen had a short-lived lead of 8–2 until halfway through the first quarter when the Yellow Jackets found a good rhythm and tied the score 10–10 at the 10-minute mark. The Yeowomen’s defensive side held Baldwin Wallace to just six points in the fourth quarter while sinking a whopping 20 points for themselves. Their stifling offense and suffocating defense down the stretch was possibly best represented by third-year center Olivia Canning, who had an impressive 10 points, 10 rebounds, and seven blocks — efforts that earned her North Coast Athletic Conference Player of the Week.

“I feel pretty good about the last game against Baldwin Wallace,” Canning wrote in an email to the Review. “They are a very good team so it was definitely an exciting game. Individually, I focused a lot on staying out of foul trouble, and on rebounding … concentrating on those allow the blocking and scoring aspects of my game [to] come naturally. As a team, I think our defense was incredible. [Baldwin Wallace] typically scores in the 70s and 80s and we kept them in the low 40s.”

Defensively, the Yeowomen have exclusively executed a high-intensity woman-to-woman defense for the past couple of years, making no exception in their game against Wooster. According to Jenkins, he prefers this style of play – a feature of distinctively “Oberlin women’s” type basketball – over a zone defense.

“That’s just who we are,” Jenkins said. “I do very little adjustment game to game. I believe

in a mastery of your concepts. I believe that if you are good at what you do and you master what you do, then you can compete and play against anybody.”

The team will get the weekend off as they prepare for their next game against the Denison University Big Red at 7:30 p.m. in Philips gym next Wednesday.

The Yeomen — who were also on the road — were less fortunate in their Wednesday matchup, as a strong second half was too little, too late to overcome a 34–25 halftime deficit to the Tigers. Led by sophomore guard Joshua Friedkin’s team-high 17 points, the young team — which has no seniors and just three juniors — outscored the Tigers 44–40 in the second half and outshot the Tigers from the floor 50 percent to 43 percent, and from behind the three-point line 41 percent to 27 percent. However, they could not get anything going on the boards, as they were out-rebounded 44–24 in the 13-point loss.

Despite the defeat, the Yeomen have remained in good spirits. Junior guard Eli Silverman-Lloyd, who has taken on a veteran leadership role this season, felt good about how his team played.

“Even though we lost [Wednesday], winning over the weekend was great for us,” Silverman-Lloyd said. “It was really good to see how everything we’ve been working on in practice can come together.”

While they now stand 0–2 in the conference, the Yeomen have already exceeded their expectations going into the season. In what was expected to be a rebuilding year, the Yeomen enjoyed Thanksgiving weekend by winning the 32nd annual Harold J. Brodie Tournament at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. The Yeomen cruised through the tournament — consisting of four teams — by besting the SUNY Cobbleskill Fighting Tigers 80–77, then the tournament host Tigers 76–52 in the championship. Sophomore forward Andre Campbell earned tournament MVP, joining fellow sophomore guard Christian Fioretti on the All-Tournament team.

“We’ve started out pretty strong and have already won more games this early in the season than we did all last year,” Silverman-Lloyd said. “It’s really cool to be a part of this team’s rebuilding process.”

The Yeomen look to build on their success as they face off against the Hiram College Terriers tomorrow at 3 p.m. in Philips gym.