In its last home tournament of the season, the Alabama women’s wheelchair basketball team hosted the first annual ABC Medical Collegiate Classic at the Student Recreation Center and Foster Auditorium.

The women competed in three games against the University of Texas at Arlington, the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and the University of Illinois.

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On Friday night, the women won their first game against UTA 63-31 and dropped their second game against UW-Whitewater 82-63. On Saturday, Alabama beat Illinois 69-44 in Foster Auditorium.

The women improved their record to 24-3 on the season and 9-2 in conference play.

Caitlin McDermott, a junior majoring in psychology said UW-Whitewater is the team’s biggest rival and has won the last two national championships.

(See also “Wheelchair basketball team wins national title“)

Elissa Robinson, a senior majoring in secondary education, said the team will take away several lessons from its loss.

“Even though we lost on Friday night, we kept our heads up and moved on to the next game,” Robinson said. “We talked about the reasons why we lost and applied those skills to our game against Illinois.”

Overall, the girls said they are happy with their performance in the tournament.

“Even though we lost to Wisconsin-Whitewater, we learned a lot about ourselves and what we need to do to beat them,” McDermott said. “We played a fantastic game against Illinois. The energy, intensity and communication we needed was close to our best. Overall, I’m so proud of my team and how we played this weekend.”

The men’s team went 2-2 in its tournament games this weekend. They beat Illinois 76-71 and Missouri 49-46. They lost against UTA 70-53 and UW-Whitewater 82-46.

Next week, both the men’s and women’s wheelchair basketball teams will head to UTA to compete in the National Championships. McDermott said she hopes the team will bring home a title.

“We are keeping our goals and the national championship game in the front of our minds, so we are preparing ourselves in our last practices together,” Robinson said.

The Alabama women’s team is the No. 2 seed in the tournament, and their first matchup will be against No. 3 seed Illinois. The men go into the tournament as the No. 3 seed and will face off against No. 6 seed Southwest.

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