Six games into their conference schedule, Binghamton University women’s basketball (6-13, 2-4 America East) sits in seventh place in the America East. With head coach Nicole Scholl having stated her team’s goal of becoming a top-three team in the conference by “getting out of that 4-5 game,” her team’s results beg the question: has her team gotten any better since last year?

It is easy to look at the Bearcats’ early results and panic. At this point last year, Binghamton was 8-11, and 3-3 in the America East, both better than this year’s 6-13 and 2-4 marks.

However, those numbers do not tell the entire story.

The Bearcats struggled early on in their season against excellent competition, playing teams such as Syracuse, St Bonaventure and Lehigh. In their first six games, Binghamton played Boston, Hartford and Vermont, the conference’s top three teams. This makes their 2-4 record in that stretch a misrepresentative sample and the Bearcats are sure to improve on their current seventh-place standing in the America East.

A look at the Bearcats’ play in their six conference games offers reasons to be confident in the team going forward. Last season, Binghamton lost to UMBC 78-63 when they played at the RAC arena, but handled the Retrievers 80-63 this time around. They cruised to a 74-58 victory over Stony Brook at home, a game they won 91-86 in a tougher face-off a year ago. Even the team’s home losses to Boston and Hartford were encouraging. Against the Terriers, the Bearcats competed admirably, down 61-57 with 4:54 remaining in the game. The Bearcats lead 52-50 against the Hawks with 4:09 remaining, and lost 70-65 to a team that blew them out 74-54 in 2009. Vermont may have beaten Binghamton 76-43, but they are defending conference champions and beat the Bearcats 64-38 last season as well. Perhaps the lone hiccup that the team has had was a 55-51 loss at Maine on Jan. 21.

Binghamton women’s basketball has also seen improvement from last season. Andrea Holmes has improved her numbers across the board, and stuffs the stat sheet to the tune of 13 points, 5.2 assists and 5.1 rebounds per game. Viive Rebane has improved considerably as a rebounder and shot blocker, averaging 7.3 rebounds and one block nightly. Jackie Ward is averaging 10.8 points per game in a breakout season, and Erica Carter is as steady as ever as a senior and nets 14.1 points nightly.

With 10 more regular season conference games before the America East tournament, the next month will determine what this year’s team is made of. While last year’s squad finished in fourth place, the level of play between them and the top three teams was titanic: Boston was 16-0, Hartford and Vermont were both 12-4, and all three teams ranged from +14.8 to +19.3 in points differential. Binghamton, meanwhile, was 8-8 with a differential of -2.6. The Bearcats are attempting to show that they are right there with the top three teams this time around. While the Bearcats have not shown that they can beat the Terriers, Hawks or Catamounts, some of their early results indicate that the gap between them and those teams may be closing.