ABILENE, Texas (BCH Sports) – The Hardin-Simmons women are set to play in the American Southwest Conference semifinals on Friday night.

The Cowgirls earned a bye to the semi’s by winning the conference with a perfect record.

It’s been almost a week since they played last, and the players and the head coach say the rest is a good thing.

Head coach Kendra Whitehead said, “This will give us a chance to kind of address taking care of the ball, not turning it over as much, making the right reads, continuing working on boxing out, because I think UMHB had 22 boards and that’s something that we can’t allow in tournament time. So, these will be focus points for us it’s also a chance for us to maybe kind of have a lighter day and allow our bodies to recover.” Whitehead added, “We want to take advantage of having that bye so that we’re really fresh on Friday.”

Natasha Blizzard said, “Rest is going to be very important this was just a very physical game, a lot of us played a lot of minutes so we’re very happy to have the time to rest. But then also just to get back into the gym and just work on things that we need to work on. Little things like boxing out, rotating on defense so we’re happy that we have that time to do that.”

The ninth-ranked Cowgirls open the ASC Tournament on Friday night.

They host UT-Dallas at the Mabee Complex at 7:30 p.m.