After an upset loss Saturday to Southwest Baptist at home, Brandon Schneider questioned his team’s toughness.
The Lady Hornets had blown a 15-point lead in the second half by losing intensity on the defensive end, and by panicking and throwing up quick shots on offense. His team’s inability to put opponents away had been a concern, and it finally resulted in a loss.
“We can’t play that way, especially at home, and expect to be one of the upper-echelon teams in our league,” Schneider said. “It’s too tough of a league.”
This week Schneider has made sure his team’s toughness — or a drop in intensity — would not be an issue going into tonight’s game against Missouri Southern.
“I think number 1, if there’s been any mistake made by me, is I talk about it a lot and we probably don’t work on it enough,” Schneider said. “I think you have to have tough practices, you have to have physical practices, regardless of how long they are. ... I think you have to stress intensity level and those are the kind of things, based on our performance, I’ve obviously haven’t done a good enough job in that regard.”
Sophomore Alli Volkens said the team has welcomed Schneider’s toughness challenge, and she and her teammates are holding each other accountable.
“Practice has been a lot more intense,” Volkens said. “We’ve been focusing a lot more on defense, staying in stance and being tougher mentally and physically.”
Schneider called the last 13 minutes and the loss against the Bearcats an aberration, and the numbers back him up. Emporia State had a 15-point lead before the Bearcats ended the game by outscoring ESU 46-18.
Even with the loss — Emporia State’s second this season — the Lady Hornets are second in the country in scoring margin, outscoring opponents by an average of 29.6 points per game. While Schneider says they struggle to put games away, all 12 of their wins have come by double digits. However, they have blown double digit leads in both their losses.
Saturday’s loss becomes even more of a head-scratcher when looking at the rebounding totals, another toughness indicator in Schneider’s book. Emporia State leads the country in rebounding margin, outrebounding opponents 12.5 boards per game. Southwest Baptist is last in the conference in rebounding, yet the Bearcats somehow outrebounded Emporia State 35-32.
While these numbers will leave a coach with many sleepless nights, Schneider should rest easy after tonight’s game if history is any indicator of what the result will be.
Schneider has never had a team drop two straight at White Auditorium, and the last time that happened for the ESU women was in 1996.
Southwest Baptist snapped a 16-game home winning streak for Emporia State. Under Schneider, the Lady Hornets have followed a home loss that snapped a streak of 10 or more home wins by winning by an average of 23.3 points.
The main obstacle tonight for the Lady Hornets will be forgetting about Saturday.
“Because there’s still kind of the moping around after something happens like that, it’s kind of hard to get past it,” Schneider said. “Because we do have good character kids and it does hurt them to lose and play that way. The first thing you have to do is just get past that and get back to work.”
Volkens said she and her teammates are looking to redeem themselves tonight. In order to do so, they will have to avoid a hangover from Saturday’s loss, which Schneider does not believe will happen.
I surely hope not,” he said. “That would probably be as much as an aberration as how we played Saturday if that were to happen,” he said. “Our kids and the kind of kids we are accustomed to have always responded really well, and obviously we don’t expect anything less.”