January began promisingly enough. "The Northern Illinois University women's basketball team won its Mid-American Conference opener for the first time in six seasons Wednesday, hanging on for a 59-58 win over the Toledo Rockets at Savage Arena." Toledo, breaking in a new head coach, had lengthy home winning streaks against all opponents and against conference opponents.
Then Ohio came to DeKalb. Quoth the coach, "We let Ohio get hot early from deep, and we talked a lot about not letting that happen."
Next, the local kids played at Akron. Quoth the coach, "The defensive intensity in the last five minutes was a lot better than the 35 minutes before. It's a tough lesson but we needed to be better in the first 35 minutes to not let them get hot."
Then Western Michigan came to DeKalb. Quoth the coach, "You have to give Western Michigan credit. They were disruptive on the defensive end and we knew that coming in. There are some possessions we want back and, once we lost the lead, they did a great job of making things difficult."
It's not as if there wasn't a New Year resolution to be made. Illinois-Chicago played in DeKalb during the non-conference season. Quoth the coach, "Any time you have a one to two possession game you are going to look back at the consistency and the attention to detail at times. There were a few times where we felt like we could have been better maximizing our lead and minimizing their stretches. I think we are trending in the right direction and getting better."
At best, that team is consistently inconsistent and consistently at the bottom of the conference standings. Enough, academic performance notwithstanding.
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