St. Joseph basketball looks to improve

It was a relatively slow week for College of St. Joseph Athletics, with only one of two games being played. The men’s and women’s basketball teams hosted Fisher College on Feb. 11 and neither came out victorious.
The men’s basketball team has now dropped to 12-14 overall, while maintaining a solid Yankee Small College Conference record of 9-5. They have lost their last three games, hitting a rough patch at the wrong time, considering there’s just one game left in the regular season. The men’s team is currently ranked No. 16 in the USCAA Power Rankings and have dropped out of the top 20 in the Week 9 Coaches’ Poll.
The Lady Saints have an overall record of 11-11 and a YSCC record of 9-5. They have also lost their last three games and are searching for ways to improve going down the stretch of the season. The women’s team currently ranks No. 12 the USCAA Power Rankings and No. 15 in the Week 9 Coaches Poll. Both the men’s and women’s teams have earned the fifth seed in the YSCC Elite 8 Tournament hosted by Southern Maine Community College starting on Thursday, Feb. 16. The women will play against the fourth-seeded University of Maine at Augusta and the men will face the fourth-seeded Vermont Tech.
Feb. 11
The Lady Saints were taken down by the Fisher Falcons on Saturday in a one-sided affair that ended with a final score of 75-47. CSJ looked out of sorts from tip-off and ended up committing a staggering 26 turnovers. The Saints also shot just 27.1 percent from the field and an even worse 8.7 percent from three-point range. Senior forward Imani Stephenson had a nice performance for the Lady Saints. She scored a game-high 21 points and pulled down five rebounds.
The men’s team kept it close, but eventually came up short against the Fisher Falcons, leading to a final score of 86-75. The story of the game was the free-throw line. The Saints committed 22 fouls, which led to the Falcons scoring 26 points from the charity stripe, compared to just five for CSJ. Senior guard Kyle Houston played well for the Saints, scoring 15 points, taking down seven rebounds and dishing out six assists.