FULTON, Mo. -- The William Woods University women's basketball team returns home after a successful two-game road trip, as they host Hannibal-LaGrange University at Anderson Arena on Thursday night. Tip-off for this American Midwest Conference showdown, presented by The Callaway Bank, is set for 5:30 p.m.
William Woods (12-5; 5-4 AMC) comes into Thursday's contest with a winning record in league play for the first time this season, after going a perfect 2-0 on an AMC road trip to Mid-Continent and Stephens College. The Owls were dominate both contest, as they held a 30-point lead in both games, and shared the ball extremely well, as they had at least nine players in the scoring column. WWU had a season-best 15 players score on Saturday's 82-46 win at Stephens College.
The Owls have won its last three games since dropping back-to-back contest to Lyon College and Missouri Baptist. During the winning streak, William Woods has scored an average of 83.3 points per game. It's been a total team effort over the past three contest, as the Owls have had two games where at least 12 players scored.
However, Head Coach Dan Chapla is still looking for his team to improve.
"The key for us, and I've been saying this all year, is our defense. I'm pleased with what we've been able to do on the offensive side, but we are still striving to get better at defensive end of the floor. We've been taken care of the ball here recently, our assist-to-turnover ratio has been great, and we've been getting a lot of people involved. But we are really going to find out a lot about ourselves over the next week, as we play three quality opponents, two of which are nationally ranked."
Andraquay Quinnine and Kennedy Volkart are a huge reason for the recent success.
The 6-2 freshman Volkart has come on of late, as she is averaging 12.6 points and 6.2 rebounds over her last five games. During the winning streak, the Russellville, Mo., native has averaged a team-best 13 points per contest.
After recording 21 points against William Baptist back on Jan. 7, Quinnine went into a bit of a funk by not recording a double-digit game in her next three games. However, she has recently broke out of that, as the AMC's leading three-point shooter has recorded 14 and 11 points in her last two contests, and has hit seven trifectas over the past week.
Thursday night's game meets all the qualifications of a trap game for WWU, as they host a Hannibal-LaGrange (4-12; 4-4 AMC) that is .500 in league play before taking on the two teams who hold the top two spots in the AMC in No. 2 Freed-Hardeman and No. 15 Columbia College.
Coach Chapla is well aware of the trap, and heeded a warning to his team not to look ahead.
"Its human nature to look ahead in the schedule a bit when you have two nationally ranked teams coming up, but I've warned our team, and even our staff, that Hannibal-LaGrange is a quality team that is capable of pulling upsets in this league. If we are not ready to play them, and are already looking at Saturday and next Thursday, then they will come in here and steal one on our home court just like Missouri Baptist did."
The Lady Trojans are led by 6-0 forward Ashley Hurd-Spencer. The Australian native has picked up where she left off from a 2012-13 campaign that saw her earn First-Team All-AMC honors, as she leads HLGU in both points (15.0 ppg) and rebounds (6.9 rpg).
Hurd-Spencer has tallied double-digits in all but one game this season, and has topped the 20-point plateau in four of those contest. The junior tallied 20 points to help Hannibal-LaGrange pick up a 69-67 home win against Williams Baptist last Saturday.
HLGU started the conference season 3-1, but have since have dropped three of its previous four contests to fall to an even .500 in league play. One of its victories came against Missouri Baptist, who defeated the Owls 87-84 in the last played at Anderson Arena.
Morgan Winkler is the only other Lady Trojan to average double-figures, as her 11.8 points per game contest helps her team to an average of 55.3 points per game. Defensively, HLGU is holding teams to 64.1 points, and they will be looking to snap William Woods' four-game streak of scoring 80 or more points. Â
WWU went a perfect 2-0 against Hannibal-LaGrange last season, and holds the all-time series lead at 25-20.
Check back with wwuowls.com for a full recap of this and every game during the 2013-14 season.
