One peek at their record and it may not seem like the Central women’s basketball team was in many games they played in. The Dutch went 4 – 21 this year and 1 – 13 within the Iowa Conference; a league that had two Division III national tournament teams and three schools that were getting votes in the rankings all year. However, Central’s defense was as stingy as ever, and kept them right there in many of those conference games. Central allowed fewer made threes per game, and grabbed five more rebounds per game on average compared to the 2014-15 season. Nearly diving into “sabermetrics” like we do with baseball, Coach Chelsea Petersen says that if the team’s defense wasn’t as good as they were this past season, they would not have been able to hang around in a good chunk of those conference games. Four non-conference losses were decided by less than ten points, and more times than not, Central held teams to under their scoring average. Their 2016-17 campaign tips off on November 15 at Grinnell.

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