Women's basketball bounces back from losing streak

DENTON, TX

Joshua Paveglio

After losing five straight conference games the North Texas women’s basketball team has gotten out of their drought- winning four of their last six competitions

“I think we turned some thing around,” Head coach Jalie Mitchell said. “Statistically we’ve gotten more people involved on the scoring and rebounding side. We’ve been much better as a team in league play.”

The recent win streak of three games for Mean Green was ended to #25 nationally ranked Rice, who is still undefeated in conference play.

“As far as our strengths go I think we addressed those and that’s why you see the turnaround,” coach Mitchell said.

The recent success of the team has earned North Texas an automatic bid into the Conference-USA championship tournament.

“I feel like our mentality has changed,” Junior guard Velma Mitchell said.

The winning streak has brought the teams overall record to 14-12 and successfully brought the North Texas’ conference record to a .500 win percentage going 7 -7 in conference play in this 2018-19 season.

“In this conference is anybody can win it,” Mitchell said. “So, these last games are really important for us.”

If the Mean Green are able to win the conference tournament, they will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. An automatic bid, means they automatically have a spot in the tournament which consist of some of the 64 best teams in the country.

“It’s always important to finish strong,” coach Mitchell said. “It finalizes where we finish in conference and you always want to be playing your best basketball at the end of the season.”

If they can pull out wins in the two final games on the conference schedule the team has a chance to place themselves closer to the top of the conference prior to the tournament, which would result in easier matchups near the beginning of the tournament.

To round out the regular season schedule the Mean Green will take on Western Kentucky on March 2nd and University of Texas- El Paso on March 7th. The Mean Green have beaten both of these teams this season.

With their bid into the conference tournament North Texas will be competing no matter what but there’s a few different scenarios for how the end-of-season games will affect the team’s standing.

“It’s nice to go into the conference tournament playing well,” Coach Mitchell said. “We’ve been talking about playing our best basketball for a couple of weeks and that’s where we intend to be.”

If they lose either of their final two games they can drop as low as the tenth seed. If they split the games and win one and lose one, they may be able to beat out Charlotte Norms who are tied in the standings with the Mean Green.

“We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to finish,” Sophomore point guard, Trena Mims said.

If North Texas comes out with a win in both games they could land as high as the fourth seed if all five teams above them lose the rest of their games.

“I feel like we’re going in confident,” Mitchell said. “We’re hungry, we can feel it coming.”