After a loss to the University of Massachusetts on Saturday, the Flashes women’s basketball team is looking to improve against Eastern Kentucky on Wednesday.

“We’re excited for this opportunity to go to Eastern Kentucky because they’re an experienced team,” head coach Danielle O’Banion said. “They start at the least three seniors and two juniors, it might even be four seniors and one junior. So we have a challenge ahead of us, but I like the match up for us, especially because we get to transfer some of the lessons that we learned from UMass and use some of it.”

Eastern Kentucky won its season opener against Miami University in overtime, 73-63. The Lady Colonels outscored the RedHawks 12-2 in overtime.

Junior guard Marie Carpenter had a game-high 27 points and senior center Jade Barber fell just short of a triple-double, with 13 points, 21 rebounds and seven blocks. Senior guards Raechele Gray and Brittany Coles also scored in double digits for the Lady Colonels.

“They played exceptionally hard and benefited from Carpenter, their guard and Barber in their post duo doing a very nice job,” said O’Banion. “We’re going to focus on the things that we need to do to be effective against them.”

The Flashes lost to UMass 83-53 and are focused on taking what they learned from that game to Eastern Kentucky.

Seniors Diamon Beckford and Trisha Krewson scored 15 points and 11 points respectively for the Flashes.

Krewson said that practice has been working on the mistakes against UMass and focusing on defense to be able to change it up and keep the opponents surprised and on their toes.

“One of our main points of emphasis was our transition defense because Eastern Kentucky likes to run and they like to score in transition,” said Krewson. “They also have two pretty good players that we’ve been focusing on in defense — and then at the same time we just want to focus on ourselves too and do what we know how to do on offense in our game. It’s not so much focusing on them, but focusing on ourselves.”

The women’s basketball team will compete in its first home game of the season at 7 p.m. Monday against the University of Cincinnati Bearcats in the M.A.C. Center.

Contact Erika Brun at [email protected].