The second semester is underway, and while most Oswego State students were home enjoying winter break, the Oswego State Lakers were here shooting hoops. Here is what happened in the month of January.

The Lakers went 1-9 in the month of January, with their only win coming against SUNY Cortland on Jan. 12. They averaged right around 55 points per game and have fallen to last in the SUNYAC with a record of 2-18. Their leading scorer was Samantha Britton, who is averaging 11 points per game. Their leading rebounder, Ramatoulaye Sy, has a total of 190 rebounds on the season but has unfortunately gone down with an injury.

“We got to play basketball with fewer mistakes,” head coach Sean Pinkerton said. “We don’t have enough margin for error … We are not a team that’s putting a lot of points on the board. We are not shooting the ball well.”

Oswego State is second to last in the conference in field goal percentage (33.3 percent) and last in three-point field goal percentage (23 percent).

Rachel Windhausen said there is nowhere to go but up.

“The goal is always to just go in and play our hardest and obviously to win,” Windhausen said. “We are not having the greatest season, but now, there is nothing to lose, so why don’t we just go and play our hardest and play basketball.”

This will also be Windhausen’s final season with the Lakers, and she reflected a bit on her senior year and her time as a Laker.

“We are not having a great season, so it has been disappointing in that way, but all the girls make up for it,” she said. “We have a great team. We get along really well. No one dreads coming to practice or going to games or anything like that. It’s really been a great five years here so I’m just trying to take it all in.”

She also said she liked her leadership role.

“I remember how it was when I was a freshman, so it is always a learning curve coming from high school basketball to college and just from coming from high school to college in general,” she said. “You just try to be there for them on and off the court and form those bonds and try to help them just mature and get used to college.”

Windhausen is currently Oswego State’s fourth leading scorer averaging seven points per game and is the second-leading rebounder on the team with 120 rebounds.

Earlier this week in the game against SUNY Cortland, Sy had what looked like a bad knee injury but Pinkerton said it does not appear to be an ACL injury.

“They haven’t done an MRI,” he said. “The trainer did a workout with her at lunch and then another one during our practice.”

Sy was the third leading scorer on the Lakers, averaging 10 points per game and 9.5 rebounds per game.

The Lakers are back in action at 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 8 at SUNY Potsdam and then at 5:30 on Saturday, Feb. 9 at Plattsburgh State.

Photo by Maria Pericozzi | The Oswegonian