OLEAN, N.Y. — Seemingly every season, the GW women’s basketball team is not without one head-scratcher, a loss that makes those who follow the team wonder just how a ranked squad could lose to that opponent.
Last year, it was Saint Joseph’s in the Atlantic 10 tournament. Two seasons ago, at home against Richmond. This season, there was the inexplicable loss against the University of Nevada-Las Vegas in November. And as of Saturday afternoon, a 63-60 defeat at St. Bonaventure.
This might be the most talented women’s basketball team GW has seen in years and it was certainly one with high expectations when the season started. Ranked in the top 25 in both polls before ever playing a game, it seemed probable, if not definite, that the Colonials would return to the Sweet 16 and perhaps go even further in March.
But there have been a few setbacks. Even though the squad ran away with the contest in the second half, it struggled early in its opening game at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. Since then, it has suffered 25-point losses to then-No. 6/7 Rutgers University and at James Madison University, to go along with the aforementioned UNLV defeat and now the St. Bonaventure loss. GW also lost a nail-biter at Temple in late January, but the Owls are a perennial conference contender and the Colonials’ main rival.
While each loss has come in a somewhat different way, whether it be simply from being outmatched or because of injuries, the Colonials have had something in common in a lot of the games: the inability to put together 40 minutes of solid basketball. It is an issue that has plagued the squad in years past as well and it has come up in many of the losses this year.
GW was up by 24 points against UNLV before losing and down by as much as 23 against the Bonnies. While it says something about the Colonials’ resiliency that they completely erased the deficit in the latter game, leading by two late in the contest, the fact that they had to essentially reinvent themselves in the second half might have drained the squad too much to win.
“It took a lot to come back and take the lead,” coach Joe McKeown said. “We just dug ourselves too deep a hole.”
These losses show what a split team the No. 17/13 (AP, ESPN/USA Today) Colonials can be. Coupled with these defeats are wins over Texas A&M at home and Auburn on the road when both squads were ranked, and victories over Xavier and Charlotte, two of the top teams in the A-10. But it seems like sometimes there is no middle ground. When they play well, they look like one of the country’s top teams and can compete with the best. But when things go wrong, as they did in the first half against the Bonnies, the game is theirs to lose.
