With the departure of key players across New England, NESCAC women's hoops may no longer be a two-horse race contested in Maine.
For the past six years, Bowdoin and Bates have met in the NESCAC Championship game. And every year, the Polar Bears have come away with the crown, making women's basketball the most dynastic of the NESCAC sports. Only lacrosse has been as dominated by a single team, with Middlebury taking all 12 men's and women's titles since the tournament's inception in 2000-01.
But this year, the door may be opening just a crack , and the Jumbos will be one of several teams across the league with a chance to get their foot in it. It won't be easy; while the league's two top dogs are missing some key components from their championship-bound teams, their cores remain intact, and the strength of the top, as with most NESCAC sports, tends to be reinforcing.
"Bowdoin, until someone beats them, is still going to be the top team," said Bates coach Jim Murphy, whose Bobcats got the best of Bowdoin once last season but could not pull out a postseason win. "But looking around this year, I just don't know. There are a lot of teams that can be dangerous."
Nationally, the league's strength in the sport has been widely recognized. NESCAC was only one of two conferences in the nation to get four bids to the NCAA Tournament, with Bowdoin, Bates, Williams and Wesleyan all making the trip. But now, with second-year coaches settling in at Colby and Trinity and significant roster changes across the league, there's a feeling that there might be room for movement within the league as well.
"I think the league is getting increasingly more compressed, meaning that on any given night, this upcoming year, I think any team could beat another," Wesleyan coach Kate Mullen said. "Our league has something of a reputation for beating up on each other, and I think you're going to see more of that this season. From one through 10, there's the potential for upsets every night."
According to Mullen, home-court advantage has played a large role in regular-season and championship wins, and the potential for road upsets this season could effect postseason seedings.
"When Bowdoin is able to finish the regular season in first place, hosting is huge for them," Mullen said. "In a league like this, you try to win all your home games, but you really have to get road wins against good teams. And this year, there are teams capable of coming into someone else's gym and walking out with a win, and that shows up [in the NESCAC Tournament seedings]."
Bates is reeling from the unexpected loss of senior Meg Coffin, last year's NESCAC Player of the Year and the Bobcats' leading scorer (17.1 ppg, 11.0 rpg). After tearing her ACL during the soccer season, when she was a First Team All-NESCAC defender for the Bobcats, Coffin will miss the entire season with a full knee reconstruction scheduled for early January.
The Bobcats also lost starter Annie Whiting (5.2 ppg, 4.2 rpg) and three other seniors to graduation. With the loss of their offensive and defensive pillar, and with six freshmen on the roster, the Bobcats may not be the same NESCAC Title game team that dealt Tufts its one of the most lopsided losses in program history last year, a 74-48 decision in Lewiston, Maine, on Feb. 4.
"[Coffin] is the reigning NESCAC Player of the Year, so to lose someone of her talent definitely hurts us," Murphy said. "But we're going to play with five girls, and we've still got some very good players."
Despite the loss of Coffin, Bates returns its second-, third- and fourth-leading scorers as well as a senior class that's likely had enough of losing to Bowdoin in the championship game. The Bobcats will certainly be a roadblock for any league team looking for a title run of its own.
Wesleyan, the fourth finisher in the league last season at 7-2, is also smarting from personnel changes. The Cardinals lost their top two scorers in departed seniors Ashley Mastrangelo and Hannah Stubbs, but according to Mullen, that hit that has changed the way the team plays.
"We have talent in each class, and certainly when you go from focal point of two people, it gets much more spread out over the entire team," Mullen said. "We really will be playing as a team; we will be that clich?© all year. I've said to the kids, teams won't know who to double-team."
The biggest league threat this season may actually come from a top-heavy and seasoned Williams team. The Ephs came in third in the league last year - actually a lot better than it sounds given the wealth of talent at the top - and won a pair of NCAA Tournament games before bowing out in the Sweet Sixteen. Like Tufts, Williams benefited greatly from the changing of the guard last May. The Ephs had lost a single player from last year - albeit a talented one in All-NESCAC guard Colleen Hession - and now welcome a six-member senior class that boasts five of the team's seven top scorers last year.
"A lot of seniors definitely graduated, especially among the top three or four teams from last year, which makes it a little more wide open," Tufts senior guard Valerie Krah said. "At same time, that doesn't mean anything if we don't focus on ourselves and our team."
And that team, like Williams, is stronger at the top than in past seasons. With four seniors on the team, and all four in the starting lineup, the Jumbos have the largest senior presence since the 1999-2000 team.
"Our experience will make us one of most competitive teams in the league, and I'm really interested to see how it all pans out over the next couple months," Tufts senior guard Taryn Miller-Stevens said. "I'm excited about the increased competition, and we think we're right up there with the best of them."
