It may not be March yet, but the madness begins tomorrow for the Jumbos and their NESCAC counterparts.
Compiling an 8-1 conference record - the team's best clip since the NESCAC started tournament play during the 2001-02 season - Tufts earned itself a second-place finish in the league and a home game against the seventh-seeded Middlebury Panthers tomorrow, a team the Jumbos handled with relative ease in a Feb. 2 61-50 victory.
Although the team may not have played up to its capabilities for the entirety of that match, there should be no surprises this time around, as little has changed for either team in the past two weeks.
"Although they have one post player of decent size, we have an overall advantage in the post, based on height, athleticism and experience," senior Taryn Miller-Stevens said. "We will pound it inside. They'll probably play us in zone. We've been working better against zone and will look to attack. We also need to run the fast break and push the ball more."
Indeed, on the first go-round, Tufts exploited its advantage under the hoop, out-rebounding Middlebury 54-39. Such relentlessness on the inside from senior co-captains Libby Park and Laura Jasinski, along with junior Khalilah Ummah, propelled the Jumbos during the earlier part of the season, but the squad strayed from its newfound dominance in the paint later in the year, looking more to senior guards Valerie Krah and Miller-Stevens on the perimeter.
But in a league like the NESCAC, coach Carla Berube's team will need to pull out all their weapons. The Panthers may have been 3-6 in the conference, but if not for some late-second heroics during the regular season, Tufts could have easily been closer to that mark, rather than atop the league.
"At this point, once you enter into the tournament, you can't pinpoint one or two teams as the most dangerous," Krah said. "Any team can end your season on any day."
"This year, the NESCAC is anybody's game," Berube added. "Whoever is playing well that day can win that game."
But if this is the year of parity, someone will have to stop the No. 1 team in the country: the Bowdoin Polar Bears. At 23-1 overall and 9-0 in the NESCAC, the Bears have been nearly unstoppable this year, and throughout the tournament's history, for that matter, winning all six championships.
From the looks of things, Bowdoin is not going to surrender its top spot so easily. It is no surprise that no one has been able to stop the Bears, as they lead the league in nearly every offensive category - total points scored, scoring margin, field goal percentage, three-point field goals made, rebounding margin and steals.
They're not too shabby on the defensive end, either, having allowed the fewest points per game and the lowest field goal percentage from in front of and behind the arc.
"They are a very disciplined, smart, well-coached team," Berube said. "They use their advantages very well. After watching our film, we certainly didn't play our best [against them]. We didn't give ourselves a shot of playing them the way we're capable of."
Of course, Tufts' only NESCAC loss came in its penultimate game of the season against Bowdoin on Saturday. With a 29-19 halftime lead, the Bears cruised to a 60-41 victory in arguably the season's most highly touted NESCAC match-up.
Still, the Jumbos are not convinced their counterparts from Brunswick, Maine are too hot to handle.
"From our perspective, the thing we did poorly against them was offensive execution, boxing out and rebounding, and just real court sense and composure with the ball," Miller-Stevens said. "Bowdoin is not an unbeatable team. They're not on a pedestal in a sense that they're up in the clouds and everyone else is way below them.
"They have a harder road to the finals this year because they [probably] have to get through Williams or Wesleyan, who they had trouble with earlier in the year," she continued. "Although this may not be the best team they've ever put together, they are disciplined and it will take a disciplined game of all-out defense to fluster them."
While everyone's eyes will be on the Bears, no one should underestimate the abilities of either Wesleyan or Williams, who will square-off against each other in a five-versus-four match-up on Saturday in Williamstown.
Overshadowed in the middle of the pack, Williams and Wesleyan could give the top three teams - Bowdoin, Tufts, and Bates - a run for their money.
Tufts learned that lesson first-hand earlier in the season. The Jumbos barely eked away with a last-second 60-58 victory over the Cardinals on Jan. 27, and similarly, only won by a slim five-point margin against Williams on Feb. 3.
"If Williams beats Wesleyan, Williams-Bowdoin could be a great game, and Williams could take that game," Miller-Stevens said. "Their guard defense is one of the best in the league and their on-the-ball defense is phenomenal. If they can really upset Bowdion's offense and get them to get away from they're disciplined play, that's what will do it for them."
The speculation can only go so far, however, as the league's top teams are anxious to get out on the floor on Saturday afternoon. Every team knows what it will take to get to the championship game, but it's all a matter of execution at this point.
"It's going to take the extra effort," Krah said. "It's going to take playing within ourselves, executing on offense, playing solid defense, and doing the little things."
