Defense The Key To Success For Haverford Women's Hoops

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The 2017-18 season has been a very good so far for the Division III Haverford College women's basketball team.

The Fords are 16-3 heading into Wednesday night's road game with Washington College.

"It's a solid start," Haverford head coach Bobbi Morgan tells KYW Newsradio. "In coach speak, we still have a long way to go. But we feel good about where we are going into the final couple weeks of the season."

The Fords are 12-2 in Centennial Conference action. That has them in third place, but they are just a game behind first-place Muhlenberg.

Stifling defense is a big reason for Haverford's success. The Fords allow the fifth fewest points per game in all of Division III with opponents averaging just 46.5 points while shooting 32% from the field.

"I think that's kind of been the thing that we've kind of hung our hats on here," Morgan says. "Even going back to when I coached at Cabrini, I think it's kind of that Philly kind of 'in your face' defense that we like to play. It goes back to something when I even first got here, we weren't very good offensively - we couldn't score at all, actually. So we decided let's commit to being good at defense and that was ten years ago, and we've been pretty consistently good. We're just a little better scoring now than we used to be."

Morgan talks about some of the players keying their success this season

"We have two senior post players," she says. "Sierra Berkel from New York City and Sam Wetzel from St. Joe's [High School] in Hammonton, she's a pretty local kid. Both of those players earned All-Conference honors last year, they are two of the leading scorers and rebounders in the conference. We also have a local product, [junior guard] Macy Goldbach, who played at Garnet Valley [High School] and she's probably our top three-point shooter and one of our top shooters. Those three kids have been some of our most consistent scorers."

Berkel leads the team in scoring 14.3 points per game. Wetzel is second, averaging 13.6 points while Goldbach chips in 8.1 points a night.

Haverford's game with Washington College gets underway at 6:00pm on Wednesday.