With the top four seeds in the NESCAC holding serve at home last Saturday, this weekend's women's basketball semifinals will feature two intriguing regular season rematches.
Although Bates is hosting the tournament by virtue of its 8-1 regular season conference mark (its regular-season win over Bowdoin broke the tie between those teams), the conference championship and the subsequent NCAA tournament berth are far from a sure thing for the Bobcats.
The first and most obvious roadblock for Bates is its semifinal showdown with Williams. The Ephs are the only team in the league to have gotten the better of the Bobcats, handing Bates its only conference loss of the season, 69-48, on Jan. 21. This might allow the Bobcats to avoid the classic top-seed error of walking into a "trap game" with a dismissive mentality.
"We certainly shouldn't look beyond Williams," Bates coach Jim Murphy said. "The last time we played them they beat us by 21."
Murphy pointed to Williams senior point guard and main offensive threat Colleen Hession, who is among the NESCAC's leaders in points per game (seventh, 12.8) and three-point field goal percentage (eighth, .315).
The coach also cited the complementary and threatening inside play of Williams junior forwards Meghan O'Malley and Maggie Miller, a pair ranked sixth and ninth respectively in the conference in points per game (13.6, 12.5). Miller leads the conference in blocked shots with 2.36, and O'Malley is eighth with 0.88. Both are also among the NESCAC's most prolific rebounders, as Miller averages 8.3 nightly (third in the league) with O'Malley right behind with 7.7.
O'Malley was named NESCAC Player of the Week last week for her 17 point, 10 rebound performance in the Ephs' first round 55-39 win over rival Amherst.
When asked what his team has to do to reverse its fortunes against Williams, Murphy got straight to the point.
"We obviously have to play better; that's the only thing you can do," he said. "We'll just show them the tape this week, because the tape doesn't lie. The other thing is that I don't know how [Williams is] playing right now, but we're certainly playing better than we were a month ago."
While hosting the conference tournament is certainly a boon for the Bobcats, their home-court advantage will be decidedly neutralized due to the school's winter recess taking place this week. With most of the Bates student body off-campus this weekend, the Bobcats could face the odd circumstance of being outnumbered by Williams, Bowdoin, and Wesleyan fans.
The semifinal matchup between Bowdoin and Wesleyan, which will directly follow the Bates-Williams contest on Saturday, is also the sequel to a memorable regular-season encounter that required an extra period to resolve.
After playing to a 63-63 stalemate in regulation, Bowdoin was finally able to run away from the Cardinals, outscoring them 10-2 in overtime to notch a 73-65 victory. Wesleyan managed to neutralize Bowdoin's two leading season scorers, junior Eileen Flaherty and freshman Jill Anelauskas, but Bowdoin was led by a game-high 20 points from sophomore Marissa Berne and a 15-point, 14-rebound performance from senior Justine Pouravelis.
While Wesleyan got solid performances from freshman Ali Fourney (14 points) and senior Ashley Mastrangelo (18 points, eight rebounds), Bowdoin was able to keep the Cardinals' biggest scoring threat this season, junior Eileen Flaherty, somewhat in check with only 12 points.
The winner of the conference tournament receives an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament, but the strength of the NESCAC may merit an at-large bid to the Big Dance as well. Last season, Bowdoin won the NESCAC Tournament and received the automatic bid, but both Bates and Wesleyan were rewarded for stellar seasons by the selection committee with a berth.
Although Bates was the NESCAC's regular-season champion, it has the worst overall record (18-7) of the four teams still alive in the postseason. Murphy knows that this weekend is probably more crucial to his team than the other three in terms of moving on to the NCAA Tournament.
"If we don't win this weekend, we're not going anywhere," Murphy said. "I would think that Williams, Bowdoin, and Wesleyan, for that matter, would have a chance, whether they won [the conference tournament] or not."
