In its last chance to work out any last-minute kinks, the NIU women’s basketball team hosts St. Xavier University today at 7:05 p.m. at the Convocation Center in its final exhibition game.

NIU coach Carol Owens wants NIU to continue to close out games strongly – which her team did in a 81-50 romp over Lewis Tuesday – but would also like to see more energy from her squad to start the game.

“On Friday I want to have a better start,” Owens said. “Teams make runs in games. The end result is where we need to get better. We’ve been working on finishing out games that last five to 10 minutes.”

Preseason All-MAC selection Stephanie Raymond led NIU with 18 points against Lewis and received a well-balanced scoring effort from the rest of the team. Jessie Wilcox, Mary Basic and Becky Smith contributed 10 points apiece to the NIU victory.

Owens was pleased with the second-half effort of her team and will continue to stress the incorporation of her new system and the improvement of basic fundamentals.

“There’s definitely some things to work out,” Owens said. “Defensive rebounding, help-side defense and basic fundamentals. We’re trying to break old habits and get into new ones. We’ll be better when we get used to new concepts.”

St. Xavier is an NAIA school and compiled a 21-13 record in 2004-05. SXU lost 76-42 to NIU in an exhibition game last season and is ranked 21st in the preseason NAIA poll.