Last Saturday, Central left Bellingham with its first win against Western Washington University (WWU) on the road since 2008. The win improved the team’s record to 10-4 overall and 3-3 in GNAC play.

“It was big,” senior center Jasmine Parker said. “It was a great feeling. I was glad I could be there with my team.”

However, the Wildcats won’t have much time to celebrate as they get ready for their toughest test of the season.

The Wildcats will match up with GNAC leading University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) Thursday at Nicholson Pavilion. UAA is fifth in NCAA Division II in scoring and 10th in scoring defense.

Head coach Jeff Harada said the team would need to “stay even keeled” after a couple big road wins before Thursday’s game.

“We can’t have a let down after two big road wins,” Harada said.

He said the team needs to “understand that those games are over with and now it’s on to the next one. We need the same focus, the same energy, the same fight from those games for this upcoming game.”

Central will rely on their defense, ranked just behind UAA at 11th in the nation, to stifle a UAA team that is outscoring opponents by 30 points per game on average.

Harada said the keys for the defense are communication, understanding the scouting reports, sticking to the game plan and understanding the team’s tendencies and taking them away.

“The message isn’t to shut teams out,” Harada said. “It’s to make them work. We know teams are gonna score, they’re gonna go on runs–it’s basketball.”

Parker, leading the GNAC with 2.6 blocks per game, said the team works on its defensive fundamentals everyday.

“That’s what helps us in the games,” Parker said. “We practice really good defense.”

On the offensive side of the ball, the Wildcats will focus on their execution and being aggressive to conquer UAA’s defense.

Central has done just that so far this season. They are second in the conference in assist-to-turnover ratio and third in field-goal percentage, despite being in the bottom half of the conference in scoring offense.

That can be attributed to the team being patient with its offense, which lowers the amount of possession per game for each team.

“Obviously we’ll take layups at any time,” Harada said. “We do like to transition when we can, but if we don’t get anything right away we wanna run our offense and force teams to defend us for a full shot clock.”

Parker said the team will need to look for opportunities when they are presented and to take care of the ball.

“We just have to be aggressive,” Parker said. “We have to look for our shots, make good passes, [and] limit our turnovers. That’s the biggest thing, limit our turnovers. They’re a good defensive team and they like to trap a lot.”

To go along with Parker,  who leads the team in scoring with 12.6 points per game, Central will look for big contributions from freshman guard Mandy Steward, who has stepped up her game, averaging 11.8 points per game in conference play. That included a career- high 15 points against Northwest Nazarene University in Central’s first conference game of the season.

Steward didn’t know what her role on the team would be coming into the season.

“I had no idea, being a freshman, what I was expected to do and how much I would impact the team,” Steward said.

Harada wasn’t surprised with Steward’s offensive production.

“We knew she was a scorer, that’s why we recruited her,” Harada said. “The thing with her was, would she be able to defend at our level? Making that transition on defense was my biggest concern.”

Harada praised her effort on the defensive end.

“She struggled early, she knows it, but she’s made a conscious effort to improve her defense,” Harada said. “I’m very pleased with her effort, defensively more than anything else.”