The Emerson women’s basketball team is sixth in the New England Women’s and Men’s Athletic Conference standings and occupies the final playoff spot with seven games to go in the season.

The Lions picked up a conference win against Wheaton College (2-8) on Jan. 24 to further build their playoff credentials. They won 88-76, with Natalie Busch scoring 26 points and Sam Boyle scoring 13. Busch is the Beacon’s assistant arts editor.

The game against Wheaton, which had four double-digit scorers, showed offensive improvement in head coach Bill Gould’s eyes.

“[Wheaton is] traditionally a pretty good team in our conference, so to get that kind of balanced scoring is a sign of just good offensive production and that’s definitely something we can keep going forward,” Gould said.

Wheaton and Emerson will match up again on Feb. 14 at Emerson.

Kate Foultz, the team’s leading scorer so far this season, feels that Gould has helped the team improve on the court.

“Our coach has been working on making us tougher players and I think that has been shown in the past two wins,” Foultz said following wins over Coast Guard and Wheaton. “We’ve all been more mentally invested in the game and we’ve been better teammates, calling each other out and picking each other up, talking positively with each other, [and] the bench has been really active and loud.”

Following the win against Wheaton, Emerson lost to Springfield College 72-60 on Saturday. Sam Boyle scored 12 points and had six rebounds for Emerson. Emerson won against Clark University 80-64 on Wednesday with four double-digit scorers—Sam Boyle, Busch, Charlie Boyle, and Quinn Madden. The Lions are back in action at Smith (8-3) on Saturday. Tip off is set for 2 p.m.