The Simpson women’s basketball team got a career high 26 points from senior Cameron Kincaid in their season opening contest Saturday as the Storm picked up a 79-56 blowout win, while the Storm men fell to Dubuque 84-65 in a game heard live on KNIAKRLS.com.

A slow start for the Storm women quickly heated up as they built a 17-11 first quarter lead, then held the Kohawks to just 8 second quarter points as they led 33-19 at the halftime break. Coe outscored the Storm 27-23 as both teams were lights out in the third, but Simpson closed out the game with a dominant final quarter to move to 1-0 on the season. Jenna Taylor scored 16, with Cassie Nash dropping 13, and Hattie Rhodes grabbing 10 rebounds.

The Storm men traded blows early with Dubuque, but a late run at the end of the first half put the Storm down double-digits going into halftime, and couldn’t recover as the Spartans had five scorers over 10 points. Simpson Assistant Coach Brandon Stromer said the Storm are playing in just their second game of the season, and time on the court is more important than anything else right now.

“I told our guys we could have come here for a quick two hour practice, got some shots up and call it a day, but we got to play a basketball game. It’s a non-conference game, we are 0-0 in the league, and we got better today. Dubuque is one of the better teams in our league, and we are pretty young. With COVID, it’s pretty obvious some young teams, it’s hard on them to not have 10 non-conference games under their belt. So we are learning, we have a good group of guys who are hard workers, and we are getting better every day.”

Sophomore Andrew Curran was one of the lone bright spots for the Storm, dropping 17 points and 5 rebounds, while Chris Honz had 10. The Storm are now 0-2 on the season. The Storm women will next play on Wednesday against Nebraska Wesleyan, while the Storm men have to wait until February 3rd to face off against Central.