Heading into this weekend's semifinals of the inaugural NESCAC men's and women's basketball tournament, the odds were strongly in favor of at least one Amherst Lord Jeffs team winning and claiming the automatic bid to the NCAA Div. III Tournament. And that's exactly what happened on Saturday night.
But the way that it happened couldn't have been more unexpected.
The Amherst Lady Jeffs (22-4, 8-1 NESCAC) entered the title game against Bowdoin (19-7, 7-2) riding a ten-game winning streak that had propelled it to the top of the NESCAC, as well as the most wins in school history. But it was the men's team - only the fourth best in the conference - that came away victorious on Saturday. In that game, Amherst (21-5, 6-3) scored a minor upset over top-seeded Trinity (18-6, 6-3).
The men's game featured exciting, back and forth basketball, with Amherst emerging triumphant, 86-75. The game was close until the Lord Jeffs pulled away late in the second half. A 7-0 run swung the game in favor of Amherst, turning a 74-71 nail-biter into a comfortable 81-71 lead. From that point on, Trinity got no closer than six points.
Before the Amherst run both teams had looked sharp, exchanging leads throughout the first half. Trinity appeared to have control in the early going, taking a 12-7 lead just over five minutes into the game. But after Trinity took a 35-29 lead on a pair of three-pointers, the Lord Jeffs went on an 11-4 run to grab a 40-39 lead with 52 seconds remaining in the half. A Bantams' three-pointer, however, restored Trinity's momentum, making it 42-40 at the intermission.
The game remained tight until Amherst put together its decisive run, giving it the victory and an automatic NCAA Division III Tournament berth. Trinity is now left to hope for an at-large bid to the tournament.
Amherst's attack was sparked by senior guard Brian Daoust's 24 points - including six three-pointers - and sophomore center Pat Fitzsimmons, who added 22 points and 14 rebounds. For Fitzsimmons, it was his second consecutive double-double, as he posted 11 points and 16 boards in a 61-46 semifinal win over Colby on Friday night.
The celebratory atmosphere surrounding the men's win, however, did not find its way to the Amherst campus. That's because the heavily favored women's team, which was hosting third-seeded Bowdoin, fell on its face, thanks to a suffocating Polar Bears' defense that never let the Lady Jeffs get on track.
The game may well have been decided early in the first half, which featured play perhaps as ugly as any you'll see in a conference title game. Bowdoin jumped to an early 9-0 lead, almost solely on the strength of its defense. In fact, the Lady Jeffs wouldn't even get on the scoreboard until almost seven minutes had gone by. From that point on, Amherst was forced to play catch-up, but shot just 11.5 percent in the half. While the Polar Bears' 22.7 percent clip was not much better, it was enough to give them a 16-8 halftime lead.
But Lady Jeffs have made a habit of engineering second-half comebacks all season. In their semifinal game against Bates, they fell behind 16-0 to start the contest and saw the deficit balloon to 20-3 before putting together a second half rally to win the game, 57-53.
There was little surprise, then, when Amherst needed less than four minutes to match its first half point total and trimmed the deficit to 19-17 with 15:24 to play. Unlike most opponents Amherst had seen all year, however, Bowdoin never let the Jeffs pull away. The Polar Bears stepped up their defense again, and after Amherst got back within two, at 23-21, Bowdoin took control for good, scoring five consecutive points and never letting its lead shrink below four.
Freshman guard Lora Trenkle, who scored a game-high 15 points, iced the game on a pair of free throws with just over a minute left, making the score 47-39. Bowdoin would go on to win by a 54-41 margin, leading from wire to wire and spoiling Amherst's dream season.
The win gives Bowdoin its second-ever trip to the NCAAs and leaves Amherst hoping to earn an at-large bid to the Tournament.
