ECU women's basketball looking to improve on its conference play

Coming into its second season in the American Athletic Conference, East Carolina has won just one of its first four games in the conference.

The one victory for the women’s basketball team is an improvement from last season however, as the Pirates (7-9, 1-3 AAC) went 0-4 in their first four games in the AAC.

“We started conference play a year ago 0-4. This is part of the growth and learning process playing in the new conference,” said head coach Heather Macy.

After a slow start to begin conference play last season, the Pirates went on to improve and finished with a record of 8-5 in AAC play, propelling them to an NIT bid. Because of the turnaround a season ago, Macy isn’t necessarily concerned with the team’s recent rough patch.

“We will continue to get better with our play, at some point you’re going to look down in the win column and it’s all of a sudden going to be adding up,” Macy said.

One of the biggest difficulties of playing in the AAC is facing opponents like undefeated, top-ranked Connecticut and Southern Florida. UConn is historically one of the best women’s basketball programs in the country. It has won the last three national titles and has appeared in the last eight Final Fours. UConn is currently ranked No. 1 in the nation and USF is ranked No. 19 in the current polls as well.

The Pirates have yet to play UConn, and have already lost to USF, 61-59, in a close loss at home.

“It was a heartbreaking loss at home against those guys; they are an incredibly good basketball team,” said Macy.

The Pirates lone in-conference win came against lowly Central Florida, which is at the bottom of the conference with just three wins. The other losses were against six-win Tulsa in a close overtime thriller, and Tulane.

The American has many other talented teams as well, outside of the two ranked teams. Five of the 11 teams in the AAC have records over .500 so far this season. Seven of the 11 teams have records that are over .500 in conference play. The Pirates record of 1-3 places them eighth in the AAC.

“This is still a team that has a ton of improvement. We have not played our best basketball, or nowhere close to our best basketball. I feel very positive that we will continue to get better,” Macy said.

ECU still has 14 in conference games to play to improve its record, including two against UConn. Half of those games are at Minges Coliseum, where the Pirates have only played four contests this season and split the results. ECU will have to seize its opportunities to climb the ranks of the AAC and finish with a strong record.

“Our players have improved much over Christmas break, everyone has gotten shot reps and come in and gotten extra work in, we will continue to improve,” said Macy.