The women's basketball team's program-best season earned it every one of the NESCAC's top four honors when the all-conference teams were announced yesterday.
Senior co-captain Khalilah Ummah took home the top honor, becoming the first Jumbo ever to win NESCAC Player of the Year honors. In her first season as a starter, Ummah put together a career year, posting team highs with 12.8 points and 10.1 rebounds per game. She twice captured NESCAC Player of the Week honors during the season, once after a monster effort during the season's opening weekend and then again on Feb. 18, when she led the team to its first win over powerhouse Bowdoin since 1994.
But the accolades didn't end there for Ummah, who also picked up the conference's Defensive Player of the Year award, giving her an unprecedented two of the NESCAC's top four honors. The Litchfield, Maine native has averaged 2.23 blocks per game this season, nearly half a block more than her nearest NESCAC competitor. Ummah has anchored a Tufts defense that has been the conference's best, holding its opponents to just 52.4 points per game.
Meanwhile, freshman point guard Colleen Hart was honored as the NESCAC Rookie of the Year after a stellar 2007-08 campaign in which she has started every game for the Jumbos and averaged 11.5 points per game. For a team with two six-footers in its starting lineup, Hart has been a lethal threat from the perimeter, knocking down 50 three pointers, just seven off the single-season program record. She has also been nearly flawless at the free-throw line, shooting a conference-best 89.8 percent from the charity stripe this season.
Rounding out the Jumbos' award-winners is coach Carla Berube, who earned a NESCAC co-Coach of the Year award one year after earning the honor outright. The former UConn standout picked up her 100th career win after Tufts' conference semifinal victory over Wesleyan on Saturday and now ranks second on the program's all-time wins list after just six seasons at the helm. Only once have the Jumbos failed to post a .500 record under Berube, who has a .680 career winning percentage as coach.
Nationally ranked No. 18 Tufts will seek to become the winningest basketball team - men's or women's - in school history on Friday when it takes on NEWMAC champion Wheaton in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.
