The Washington University women’s basketball team (17-5, 9-2 UAA) returned to its winning ways last weekend, sweeping Emory University by a score of 62-50 on Friday and Case Western Reserve University by a score of 67-56 on Sunday. With these wins, the Bears remain tied for first place in the UAA with only New York University, as the University of Rochester dropped consecutive decisions this past weekend.

WASH. U. 62, EMORY 50
The Red and Green played particularly solid defense against the Eagles, limiting them to just 28 percent shooting from the field. Senior Jenny Southworth played a large role in this defensive effort and grabbed a team-high eight rebounds. On the other end of the court, senior guard Sarah Schell led the team with a game-high 19 points. Freshman Janice Evans came up strong off the bench, hitting four of five baskets from the field to finish with a career-high 13 points. She also grabbed five rebounds.

Players were quick to credit their defense as being particularly important in the victory over the Eagles: “Our defense creates our offense. Our defensive rebounding and stoppage are vital to our production on the other end of the floor,” said Evans.

“If you look at the games we have lost, it is not because we were not able to score, but because we failed to stop the other team from scoring,” added Schell.

WASH. U. 67, CASE 56
The Lady Bears got off to a rough start on Sunday, as the visiting Spartans limited the hosts to just 24 percent shooting from the field in the first half, which ended with the score tied at 27. However, Wash. U. turned it around in the second half, when Schell scored 15 of her game-high 18 points. The sharpshooter netted 16 of those points at the free-throw line, shooting 80 percent from the charity stripe.

Senior Rebecca Parker and sophomore Jill Brandt also reached double-digits, scoring 17 and 14 points, respectively. Sophomore Jaimie McFarlin grabbed an impressive 16 boards as Wash. U. out-rebounded Case, 47-36.

Despite the weak records of last weekend’s opponents, neither win proved especially easy to attain. The lead changed four times on Friday and eight times on Sunday.

“Emory and Case have only won a few games between them, but they are still very good teams who just happen to be in a very tough conference,” said Schell.

This weekend, the Bears travel to Pittsburgh on Friday to face Carnegie Mellon University and then move to upstate New York, where they will face Rochester on Sunday.

In the face of the significance of their final three UAA games, Wash. U. remains focused on the plan that it has followed all season long.

“We have a certain list of goals that we try to achieve every game: limit turnovers, out-rebound the opposing team by 10, shoot a certain percentage from the line,” said Southworth.

“We were able to achieve most of our goals in these two games, so that always helps (going into next weekend),” she added.

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