Parity is hardly the norm in NESCAC winter sports. In the 2005-06 season, every hockey, swimming and basketball conference champion had also won the NESCAC title the previous year.
Women's basketball has seen one of the more sustained periods of dominance in the conference with the Bowdoin Polar Bears winning every NESCAC championship since the tournament's inception in 2001. While shuffling around the league this year could give some of the middle-of-the-pack teams a boost, Bowdoin remains the team to beat.
That's not an easy task, as the Polar Bears have lost just a single league game in four years. And having returned nine letter-winners and four starters from last year, all the pieces are there for another repeat performance.
"They have a great deal of basketball talent and skill and are still well-coached," said Bates coach Jim Murphy, whose Bobcats were responsible for that lone Bowdoin loss. "They are a very mentally tough team. They could be up 20 or down 20, and they still have the concentration and determination to close out every game and pull out every victory."
The beginning of Bowdoin's rise to the top coincided with the hiring of Stefanie Pemper, formally an assistant at Harvard in 1998, as head coach for the 1998-99 season. In her inaugural year, Pemper, who saw the Crimson become the first No. 16 seed to knock off a No. 1 seed during March Madness, led the Polar Bears to unprecedented success of their own, earning a then-school record 19 wins and a first-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament.
Her team has been at the Big Dance every year between 2001-2006, reaching at least the Sweet Sixteen every time. The 2004 squad advanced to the championship game, the first appearance in a national title game by any team in any sport in Bowdoin history. A two-time NESCAC Coach of the Year and the 2004 Div. III National Coach of the Year, Pemper has compiled 187 wins, 135 since 2001-2002. During the past five seasons, she has posted .918 winning percentage since the 2001-02 season.
"Stef is an amazing coach and role model," Bowdoin senior tri-captain Katie Cummings said. "The program is very special and most of it is because of the hard work that she puts into it. I am lucky to have a mentor like her in my life. She has taught me many lessons beyond the basketball court."
In addition to having Pemper back for her ninth season on the bench, Bowdoin is returning much of the offensive firepower that guided it to a NESCAC-leading 70.6 points per game last season, and have lost only one starter to graduation - Justine Pouravelis, largely a defensive presence.
The Polar Bears' primary offensive threat comes from reining First Team All-American Eileen Flaherty, whose 16.7 points per game last year was the highest scoring average of any player in the Pemper era. A First-Team All-NESCAC selection each of her first three years, Flaherty needs only 379 more points to become Bowdoin's all-time leading scorer, not an impossible task for a player who became the first player in school history to eclipse more than 500 points in a season last year.
Complementing Flaherty are two outside weapons - senior Julia Loonin and junior Marisa Berne - who each made more than 50 three-pointers and shot above 31 percent from beyond the arc last season. With Cummings expected to start at point guard, Pemper has three seniors penciled into the most experienced starting five she has ever had at Bowdoin.
"Experience can help," Pemper said. "Sometimes it can be a little underrated; sometimes it can be a little overrated. Experience doesn't win games, but there's going to be an expectation that the players know what I want and that they'll be able to read my mind, which from a coaching standpoint is always nice."
The graduation of last year's lone senior starter, Pouravelis, has nonetheless left a large void in Bowdoin's frontcourt. Pouravelis led the Polar Bears in rebounding, blocks, and steals her last three years in college, earning her back-to-back-to-back NESCAC Defensive Player of the Year honors.
One player who may be counted on to fill Pouravelis' shoes is Flaherty, who was second on the team in rebounding last season with 6.2 boards per game and is also fifth all-time in Bowdoin history with 65 career blocked shots. But Pemper says that for now, she is waiting to see which of her players will develop, relying on sound team defense until then.
"We have a couple of kids who can shot-block, but we don't know if they are going to be good at it or just going to get into foul trouble," she said. "We'll see, but in the meantime, I'm going to have to keep my eye on how our 1-3-1 defense is going to work without Justine. We will be reminding our guards that they, too, need to work on getting their rebounds."
The loss of Pouravelis may still not derail Bowdoin's prospects for NESCAC and national titles, as revealed in the No. 2 national ranking the Polar Bears earned in the D3hoops.com preseason poll. But Bowdoin is downplaying the significance of the polls.
"We're just trying to set our own standards rather than live up to the rankings," Pemper said. "Preseason polls are for the media. It's too early to tell how we are going to gel and how our confidence and chemistry are going to develop over the course of the season."
