DePaul Women's Basketball Suffers Tough Season Opening Loss

The last time I watched DePaul Women's Basketball, I covered their Big East Tournament win and was ankle-deep in confetti celebrating with the team on the Wintrust Arena court. It's been a crazy eight months, but DePaul Women's Basketball is back.

Last season, DePaul was 28-5 (15-3 in Big East Conference play). The Blue Demons were ranked #15 in the country. Then the pandemic caused the cancellation of the rest of the season. After the long layoff, NCAA Women's Basketball is being played again. Preseason polls have DePaul at #19.

Unfortunately, the Blue Demons opened their season with a tough 93-91 loss to Texas A&M (who was ranked #13 in preseason polls). The Aggies jumped out to a 2-0 lead and the Blue Demons seemed to be playing catchup for the rest of the game. The Aggies actually held the lead for 35:40 to 1:44 for the Blue Demons.

DePaul's Dee Bekelja led all scorers with 24 points. Deja Church was next with 23 points, followed by Sonya Morris with 22 and Lexi Held with 17. Darrione Rogers chipped in 3 and Kayla Caudle had 2.

Kayla Wells led the Aggies with 22 points. Five Aggies had double digits and eight players scored points as the Aggies showed a balanced offensive attack.

As a team, the Blue Demons scored more from turnovers than the Aggies (27-13), but were outscored in the paint (54-38). The Aggies edged the Blue Demons in second chance points (15-14). DePaul led in points off the fast break (18-12), but the Aggies bench was much more potent (22-5).

DePaul played tough though, keeping the game close right to the end. Texas A&M managed to hold off DePaul and secure the win to bring them to 2-0 n the young season.

One other interesting thing to note was DePaul wearing masks, while Texas A&M did not. Once again, the pandemic still is affecting things.

The post-game presser featured DePaul coach Doug Bruno and players Sonya Morris, Deja Church and Dee Bekelja. Along with discussing the game, the main topics were returning after the long layoff, playing while wearing masks, the National Anthem situation and the pandemic.

Despite the loss and the continuing thought of the pandemic, the team was happy to be playing games again. Fans are happy, too, as social media lit up with constant game updates and encouragement to the team.

The Blue Demons return to action on Monday with a game against Chicago State University, one of their local rivals. The game is at Wintrust Arena in Chicago at 2 p.m.