The Central Connecticut State University women's basketball team is looking to turn their season around when they get back on the court Saturday against Bryant.
They recently ended a six-game losing streak, but the Blue Devils are sitting at 1-5 in the NEC. Coach Beryl Piper says this is part of growing pains, and that one player in particular is adjusting to life at CCSU after coming a long way to Connecticut.
Junior point guard Bruna Vila Artigues is from Spain. She says she grew up playing basketball and came to the U.S. first for junior college in Wyoming. After two seasons, she made the move to Connecticut for her junior season. A journey she says is all for the privilege of being a student-athlete.
"In Spain it's really hard to go to university and go to practice,” said Vila Artigues. “Practices are really late at night, like 10 o'clock... Just completely different, basketball has nothing to do with the university, some people have to quit playing, so that was one of my main reasons."
Vila Artigues’ coach said she sees the appreciation from the junior, adding that because she spent two years in Wyoming before coming to Central, the adjustment has been easy.
"Every once in a while we have some names of plays and it's kind of funny because she calls it out and the girls kind of make fun of her a little bit because it's funny the way it comes out,” said Piper. “But other than that, she's been great because she's been loud calling things out... So everybody was just happy to have somebody come in that was going to lead the show."
The Blue Devils have their next home game at Detrick Gymnasium against LIU on Monday, January 28.
