Follow Sports Editor Luke Gremban on twitter @LukeGremban for live-tweets and EMU sports news.
The Eastern Michigan Women’s Basketball team has a number of players leading in key statistics in the MAC conference. Each list contains the top 25 players for each category. This article will highlight the standout players from the women’s team as well as key individual and team statistics.
Jenna Annechiarico is top five in the MAC in assists, assists to turnover ratio, and steals. She has proven in my mind to be one of the best point guards in the MAC. She doesn’t score the most points, but she is critical to the offensive flow for the Eagles and has played over three hundred minute for the Eagles, far and away the most in the MAC.
Areanna Combs is the sixth-ranked scoring player in the MAC with 19 ppg, fifteenth in assists with 2.6 per game, thirteenth in rebounds, and leads the MAC in steals, averaging 3.3 per game. Combs has established herself as a premier offensive weapon who doesn’t hog the rock. She is also a determined defender, disrupting opposing guards with her dogged defense.
Ce’Nara Skanes has come into this season with her offensive guns blazing, but she has shown an ability to be effective on both sides of the ball as well. The red-shirt sophomore leads the MAC in rebounds, pulling down 10.5 boards per game while scoring 16.8 points per game (twelfth best in the MAC) and averaging close to one blocked shot per game, fifth best in the entire conference. Skanes has come into the starting lineup and gives the Eagles offensive firepower, and a powerful presence in the paint.
The team overall has a solid defense, having the second rated scoring defense behind Buffalo, but that’s not where the question marks for this team lie. The issue for the Eagles is their shooting, specifically from beyond the arc.
The Eagles are second worst in field goal percentage as a team, shooting 37 percent, and they are last in the MAC in three-point shooting percentage and made three-point shots. If this team wants to win the MAC tournament this year, they will need to get their shooting numbers up.
There is hope that they will improve, since the team averages 18 three-pointers per game, which means that they aren’t inefficient, they just aren’t hitting their shots. A key stat point is that in their second game against UIC, the team shot 0-15 from three. This is sure to have affected the team’s overall shooting percentage. Nevertheless, this area is the biggest blight on the team’s effectiveness as a whole.
