BY RAEGAN NEUFELD
PHOTO BY JESS KIRCHHOFF<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Fort Hays women\u2019s basketball team is off to a great start this season. The Tigers have been building on their success from last season\u2019s 20-2 campaign, ending in a conference championship. They started this year by being ranked first in both the MIAA and media preseason polls. After playing 15 games, the team is now 14-1 overall on the year.
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In the preseason, head coach Tony Hobson emphasized the importance of not taking last year\u2019s success for granted, due to the toughness of the MIAA conference. He now says that was an accurate statement to make.
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\u201cIt\u2019s tough again this year. There\u2019s always going to be about a four or five team race,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve played a very tough non-conference schedule, so we\u2019ve had some comparative games, but the toughest games we have every year are within our conference.\u201d
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In fact, the Tigers\u2019 only loss this season is from their game against Nebraska-Kearney. The Tigers took a half-game lead in the MIAA after their win over Northwest Missouri State on Wednesday, giving Fort Hays the better win percentage and the top spot in the MIAA standings. They have also spent most of the year in the top five of both the coaches and media polls for Division II basketball
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Two clear improvements from the beginning of the season to now are the team\u2019s overall health and defense. The Tigers started the season with a couple of players out after surgery at the end of last year. Then, Jaden Hobbs missed several games due to an ankle injury.
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\u201cWe\u2019ve only had two games this year out of 14 where we\u2019ve had everybody suited up,\u201d Hobson said. \u201cSo it\u2019s just kind of nice to have a full complement of players and try to start getting things worked out.\u201d
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As for defense, Hobson said, \u201cWe\u2019re playing better and getting used to each other. It\u2019s been more stingy than it was before Christmas.\u201d
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He also noted their depth as a reason for the larger margins of victory recently. Throughout the first five games, the Tigers’ largest margin of victory was 16 points. In the games played from December 19th to January 8th, Fort Hays beat their opponent by an average of 36.6 points.
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\u201cOur last five games have been pretty wide margins. Part of that is who we\u2019re playing, but also part of that is we\u2019ve got everybody back healthy, so our depth is much better,\u201d Hobson said. \u201cWhen somebody\u2019s showing a little fatigue we just sub. Earlier in the year when we were winning a lot of five, six point games, we were playing sometimes just seven players, with most of them playing a lot of minutes. It\u2019s hard to pull away from people without good depth, so I think that\u2019s the primary difference.\u201d
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Out of the typical starting lineup, Katie Wagner, Olivia Hollenbeck, Whitney Randall, and Jaden Hobbs are all averaging double figures. Lauren West is practically there, with 9.9 points per game. Wagner has also been a dominant rebounder, leading the team for the first seven games, and four of the last seven games. She averages nine boards per game, for a total of 126 on the season.
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Seniors Hobbs and Randall have been the leaders Hobson expected them to be, and not just in the scorebook. Before the season, he said that he hoped they would get us going early in the year and bring the others along.
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\u201cI think they\u2019ve done an excellent job,\u201d Hobson said. \u201cI think the thing they do best is they make the new kids feel welcome and make everybody comfortable. They’re very supportive, and that\u2019s what leaders are. Leaders figure out a way to get the most out of their teammates and themselves. Part of it is making sure everybody\u2019s part of the group and they\u2019ve done a good job of being inclusive. When people are like that they play much better.\u201d
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Hobson also mentioned the atmosphere of the home games in Gross-Memorial Coliseum, and how the fans bring excitement to the games.
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\u201cThere were so many questions last year, that most people didn\u2019t want to mess with it. It\u2019s been much better this year and we\u2019ve had some excellent crowds. It just makes the home experience much more enjoyable and I think we play better because of it.\u201d
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Average attendance has risen back up to 1726 this season after nine home games, compared to 789 over 14 games last year. Fans will have the chance to see the Tigers in action at home five more times before the season is over.
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As for the second half of the season, Hobson said his team is focused on staying in the moment and controlling what they can control.
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\u201cThe main thing you have to do this time of year is not get ahead of yourself and not project down the road what might or might not happen. All I know is that we know we can control ourselves and our team,\u201d he said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have any control over a lot of things, including other teams, officials, COVID, or whatever. So we just have to concentrate on doing the best we can with ourselves, and getting ready to play and preparing for each game.\u201d
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To see the upcoming schedule for the Tigers, visit the FHSU Athletics website<\/a>, and for more articles please visit the Tiger Media Network website<\/a>, as well as the social media accounts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BY RAEGAN NEUFELDPHOTO BY JESS KIRCHHOFF The Fort Hays women\u2019s basketball team is off to a great start this season. The Tigers have been building… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":62714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7349,3395],"tags":[69,3448,13357,14402,14226,182,12485,674],"class_list":["post-62713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","category-womens-basketball-sports","tag-fhsu","tag-fhsu-womens-basketball","tag-jaden-hobbs","tag-katie-wagner","tag-raegan-neufeld","tag-tony-hobson","tag-whitney-randall","tag-womens-basketball"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Whitney-Randall.jpg?fit=1329%2C783","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62715,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62713\/revisions\/62715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/62714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}