Early Test

Early test? The earliest test you can have. Why not try and pick up where you left off last year was the thought Marist had when scheduling their out of conference schedule. Seven months ago Marist shocked the world and upset 4th seeded Ohio State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. On Sunday Brian Girogis and his talented squad went to Colombus to open their season and try to shock again. Marist trailed big early and by 15 at half, but when they finally got the jitters out they looked up at the scoreboard to find themselves within two of of the 16th seeded Buckeyes with under two minutes to go and left Ohio State thinking if it could happen again. Unfortunately Marist fell 63-57 and dropped the season opener. But this team again showed that all the hype surrounding this team coming into the season was deserved. If Marist were to play Ohio State a few weeks into the season when all the kinks are out, I think they definitely beat this Ohio State team.

To be optimistic as I always am, I want to look at the positives we can take from this loss. First off Marist kept it close with Rachele Fitz and Meg Dahlman combining to shoot 6-19 from the field, and more surprisingly did not attempt a single free throw. In fact Marist only went to the free throw line 5 times compared to 22 times for the Buckeyes. Something tells me this wasn't all the fault of the Red Foxes not drawing fouls. Any basketball fan knows that when their is a free throw discrepency as large as this one, the officials may not have done a solid job. I wasn't there to see the game but it seems like Marist may have received some difficult treatment from the Ohio State officials. That being said, when this one was over Marist found themselves on a losing streak. Did I just say losing streak for this Marist women's team? The last time this team lost two games in a row was their second and third games of the 06-07 season when they lost to Duke and Villanova back to back. So back to this streak, dating back to last year and their season ending loss to Tennessee, this loss to Ohio State technically started a two game losing streak. Im going to just say on record this will be the last losing streak we see this season by this team. Lets just prepare for the winning streaks this team stacks up this year.