The Taylor Women’s basketball team has had a rough stretch of games late in the season. With only one game left to go, they’ve dropped three of the four games in the month of February. The most brutal loss was to cross-town rival Indiana Wesleyan, by a score of 90-57. Two of those teams are either ranking or receiving votes to be ranked, while the other two teams are quite the competitors with the Crossroads League.
Junior Taylor Westgate, however, did amass her 1,000th point of her collegiate career while donning the purple-and-gray in that game. She’s averaging career highs in points, which has led more minutes per game.
“I just want to be a really great leader and teammate on-and-off the court,” Westgate said. She gave high praise to senior Gretchen Moll, who has also dominated the post-game for the Trojans this year.
Along with the impressive scoring, junior Claycee West has led that Taylor offense. She is having a career year in nearly every statistical category, and her scoring outputs show it. Notable games include 22 points against Huntington, 26 points against Goshen and 22 points against Spring Arbor (first meeting).
“It’s been a lot of fun (getting more minutes),” she said. “We knew we’re going to be called next (up to score). To step into the role of scoring and actually playing on the court has been different, but a really fun challenge to accept.”
West alluded to the whole junior class stepping up and playing big minutes. This includes herself and Westgate, but also juniors Ava Henson and Lauren Farb, both of whom have been playing quite a role in the Trojans’ offense.
“Coach Martinez believes in us, my teammates believe in us, and to be able to go out and produce good numbers has felt great. You feel supported. Your teammates are right behind you cheering you on, and there’s not a better feeling than that,” West said.
Coach Martinez entered this year with high expectations. He said that it has been a fun and fast year for the program. Sadly, the results are not where he wants the team to be.
“We’ve had sporadic injuries from different types of players that started back in September,” Martinez said. He mentioned that those injuries hindered the ‘flow’ of coaching.
As Martinez described it, the first two months are important to determine practice time for certain players. When certain players are not at practice and in the training room, it hurts chemistry.
“We had this expectation that we were going to be one of the best teams in the conference, and we were hoping to be at 20 wins by now,” he said.
Though not at 20, Coach Martinez re-focused the team, and set their sights on trying on being the best team they can be going into the Crossroads tournament. He said that the team needs to be consistent on both offense and defense. He wants the team to take care of the ball and to score.
“You play a sport; you have to score. Defense can keep you in games, but you may not still win if you don’t score,” he said. He references the latest game against Grace College earlier this month. Though holding their opponent to 55 points, which is under their scoring average, the Trojans had one of their worst offensive outputs this season, only scoring 37 points in total.
The Crossroads Tournament tips off for them on the road at Grace College tomorrow at 7 p.m.
