In the Mon-Dak Pre-Season Conference Tournament held in New Town, ND, the DCC women’s basketball team finished 1-2 in a 4th place finish.
On opening day, the Lady Bucs were seeded against United Tribes Technical College. Dawson came out strong in the first quarter leading 21-14. However, United Tribes fought back and led 24-15 in the second quarter. In the second half, Dawson would not teeter-to back and forth and claimed both quarters and won the game 72-55 after pressing them full court.
Returning conference MVP Alexius Foster scored 17 points and had 8 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 steals. Ejanae Coopwood had a double double with 14 points and 11 rebounds along with 6 assists and a game high 4 steals. Freshman guard Tasia Moore made her debut scoring a game high 18 points, but went 8-22 from the foul line. DCC outrebounded UTTC 54-47.
In the semifinal game, Miles City Community College was Dawson’s next opponent. Miles finished dominating North Dakota State College of Science in the opening round 71-49. They continued their dominance by thumping the Lady Bucs 86-44 from beginning to end. Impact high scoring guard Tasia Moore would get going quick scoring 7 of DCC’s 8 points in the first quarter, but got injured and was out for the rest of the tournament. The Lady Pioneers collected 20 steals by forcing 41 Dawson turnovers and scoring 46 points from those turnovers. MCC made 27 points from the 3 point line and DCC only made 9. Sarah Miranda would be the lonesome Buccaneer in double digit scoring with 13.
In the third place game, Dawson lost to Lake Region State College 74-85. Though the game was up and down and Dawson was up at half 38-35, the Lady Royals used a 1-2-2 zone press causing the Lady Bucs to have 26 turnovers. Lake Region would capitalize on that, and scored 22 points from it. Dawson would score 27 points from Lake Region’s 34 turnovers. Alexius Foster had a team high 22 points with 6 assists. Ejanae Coopwood had 16 points along with 5 rebounds. Sarah Miranda had 14 points and 6 rebounds. Maddison Carman had 3 rebounds along with 11 points. Chynna Torrence chipped in with 8 points and a team high 7 rebounds.
Head Coach Romeo Lagmay, Jr. commented on the opening weekend, “It was tough losing two games the way we did. I think we are underachieving right now, but we are mostly new and young, and the learning process is early. However, games are officially countable, so we can’t learn and lose at the same time. I’ll have to do a better job preparing them in practice as well. Hopefully, we will get it together soon.”