Speed bumps interfere with greatness.

And it was losses at Samford University Jan. 28 and at Chattanooga Jan. 30 that coach Charlotte Smith hopes are just temporary hurdles for the Elon University women’s basketball team to overcome on the road to a Southern Conference championship.

The Phoenix plays Furman University and UNC-Greensboro this week in an attempt to get back on track. The Samford loss ended a four-game Elon winning streak and the Chattanooga defeat enhanced the agony.

“We just gotta play the way that we played the last four games,” Smith said. “We played with a lot of intensity and executed offensively.”

Furman beat the Phoenix 75-60 in Greenville, S.C., Dec. 17. In that meeting, the Paladins used a 50-34 rebounding advantage to get ahead early and stay ahead late for an easy victory. Now Elon (10-11, 6-6 Southern Conference) looks to exact revenge on a team ahead of them in the SoCon standings.

“Teams that beat us the first time in conference, you know we’re going to have that little extra something, you know trying to get them back and trying to show them that first game was a fluke,” junior guard Ali Ford said.

The Phoenix should be quite familiar with UNCG. The two local foes met in Alumni Gym Jan. 23, an affair the Phoenix won handily 57-43.

Lazy passes leading to turnovers cost Elon dearly in their loss against the Mocs. The Phoenix gave the ball away 19 times and Chattanooga made them pay.

The losses put the Phoenix square in the middle of the SoCon standings. Elon is in sixth, well off the pace set by 11-1 Appalachian State University.

While the Samford defeat wasn’t ideal for anybody in the Elon Phoenix program, it did have its shining moment. With 16:32 remaining in the game, Ali Ford found herself alone with the basketball behind the three-point line. Her shot, like so many before it, found the bottom of the net. It gave the junior guard her 235th career triple, breaking the school record set in 2001 by Loretta Lawson.

“Those kind of things come if you just do what you’re supposed to do,” Ford said. “It was pretty much wide open, and I remember thinking, ‘If you can’t make this. This is as wide open as you’re going to get all game.’ So luckily that went in.”

And if luck goes the Phoenix way, a January defeat at the hands of the Samford Bulldogs may be just a distant memory in the rearview mirror on the road to an otherwise successful season in 2011-2012.