Defense was an emphasis during practice this week for the State University of New York at New Paltz women's basketball team.

The Hawks (2-2), coming off a 75-63 loss in their home-opener against Vassar College, gave up 28-first quarter points against the Brewers, which led to their second defeat of the season. Through four games they have given up an average of 80 points per game, and they understand entering SUNYAC play against The College at Brockport and SUNY Geneseo this weekend that that number needs to get significantly lower if they want to come out with two conference victories.
  "Heading into this weekend some things we've worked on in practice are getting our defensive intensity up, practicing our rebounding, finishing possessions and just getting more defensive stops," said sophomore guard Marion Dietz. "On defense [we've worked on] our rotations in deep-help on to support, we changed it a little bit so it is less thinking, less in-direct switches and we just need to finish our possessions on defensive rebounding."

Dietz led the way offensively in SUNY New Paltz's outing against Vassar, scoring a season-high 19 points and eight rebounds. But going into their first SUNYAC weekend, Dietz and the Hawks are looking forward to bounce-back from a tough home-opening loss against Vassar and defend their home floor.

"We definitely want to redeem ourselves, because we had a really poor outing on Tuesday," Dietz said. "Coming in here for the first weekend of SUNYAC and just having two home games is a big push for us."

Overall, the Hawks have excelled on the offensive end, averaging 75.5 points per game and discarding their most recent outing against the Brewers, have shot nearly 43 percent  from the floor.

"We've been working a lot on transition on offense too," said sophomore forward Paige Niemeyer. "I feel like with the team we have we can run the floor really well and we can get it up the floor easy, get easy baskets that way."

SUNY New Paltz will see The College of Brockport in their first game of its back-to-back — a team the Hawks had swept last season including in the conference semifinals.

Through their first four games the Golden Eagles (2-2) are led offensively by, Bailey Pratt (12.3 ppg), Lindsay Johnson (10.5 ppg) and Julianna Taylor (10.3 ppg). As a team they are averaging just 56.3 points per game, while giving up around 61.5.

"We're definitely confident," Niemeyer said. "I mean, there is definitely a target on our back coming into this season, but I really believe we can push through and beat Geneseo and Brockport because we have in the past. We beat Brockport three times last year and knocked them out of the [SUNYAC] semifinal. And we beat Geneseo, we've shown we can do it and I think we definitely think we can do it again."

The Hawks and the Knights have had one of the biggest conference rivalries in women's basketball the past few seasons. Geneseo had defeated SUNY New Paltz both times last year in the regular season, but the Hawks avenged that loss when it counted, defeating them in the conference title game for the second-straight season to clinch back-to-back titles.

"Geneseo I know has good shooters," Niemeyer said. "They run the wing ball screen a lot, so I think if we just lock down on that on defense and improve that way then we'll definitely be able to get them."

Through five games of the 2017-18 season the Knights have played well, winning four of five, including three in a row and are averaging 69.4 points while giving up just 49 points per game.

McKenna Brooks and Lindsay Halpin has led Geneseo thus far, averaging 13.2 and 10.6 points per game, respectively.

The Hawks are scheduled to play Geneseo Saturday at 1 p.m., before hosting the Golden Eagles Friday at 5:30 p.m. in the Hawk Center.

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