In its victory over Temple on Tuesday, the Massachusetts women’s basketball team proved that it could defeat the stronger teams in the Atlantic 10. However, in Saturday’s matchup against Duquesne, the Minutewomen will be going up against a team featuring a better conference record and the top-scoring offense in the conference.

In addition to bolstering the team’s place in the conference standings, UMass’ win over the Owls has given the team a jolt of confidence as they broke out of a 1-6 slump. With only two points from leading scorer senior Stefanie Gerardot, the Minutewomen (10-14, 3-6 A-10) won because of a balanced offensive attack with contributions from their bench.

‘We played as a unit and I think that’s important,’ said UMass coach Marnie Dacko. ‘Stephanie Lawrence came in and gave us some quality minutes; Kim Benton came in and gave us some quality minutes. I think Sakera [Young] and Diatiema [Hill] came in and played a great game, one of the best I’ve seen them play.’

The win was enormous for UMass’ younger players as Dacko believes that wins like those will help her young team in building their confidence for future games.

‘Can we build on it? That’s the challenge we have,’ Dacko said. ‘But as a young team, you want to instill confidence, you want to instill the constant competitiveness of them, you want them to be able to compete every time they step foot on the court and know that they can win.’

Although they lack size, the Dukes (14-10, 4-5 A-10) present a formidable opponent that has had great success out of conference and boasts two major threats: senior Kristi Little and junior Keri Pryor.

Little, the third-leading scorer in the A-10, is averaging 15.7 points, 4.6 assists and 3.7 rebounds per game and is a threat from beyond the arc. While she enters Saturday’s game with the highest scoring average on either team, she will also be the shortest player at 5-foot-4-inches.

The Dukes’ second leading scorer Keri Pryor, who is averaging 11.6 points and 5.1 rebounds per game, presents a bigger threat in terms of size but as a 5-foot-10 guard, cannot match up in the post with most centers.

In fact, the biggest weakness for the Dukes is their lack of a premier rebounding threat; they’ve been outrebounded by an average of 1.8 rebounds per game this year. Duquesne’s top rebounder, 5-foot-11 guard Rachel Frederick, only averages 5.8 per game. The Minutewomen look to counter with forward Teya Wright, the conference’s seventh best rebounder.

Dacko has constantly preached to her team that they need to take care of the ball and limit their turnovers. The Minutewomen will be able to see a great example of this as Duquesne comes in with a +4.33 turnover margin, good for second in the conference.

The Dukes’ ability to take care of the ball is something the Minutewomen need to improve upon if they look to win Saturday. UMass is currently second to last in turnover margin with a mark of -3.25.

Dacko believes that her team, as evidenced in the game against Temple, has the ability to play as a cohesive unit and not rely on one player, an issue that has troubled UMass at times.

‘We’re never going to win a ballgame with just one person scoring a lot of points, we want to do it the right way and we want to do it by being able to share the basketball,’ Dacko said. ‘So if somebody takes [Kristina] Danella out of the game, we’ve got four other capable human beings to step up and knock it down.’

Nick O’Malley can be reached at [email protected].