By the end of the 2006-07 season, it was clear that the women's basketball team had turned a corner.
The Jumbos had put together an 18-win season, tied for the most in coach Carla Berube's career, and advanced past the first round of the NESCAC Tournament for the first time in program history. Tufts made an appearance on the national scene, earning votes in consecutive D3hoops.com national polls for the first time since the top 25's inception in 1999.
Still, the Jumbos had room for improvement. Six out-of-conference losses put Tufts on the NCAA Tournament bubble, and a NESCAC title-game loss to Bowdoin sealed its fate, denying the team a trip to the Big Dance. By the time the 2007-08 campaign rolled around, that season-ending disappointment fueled the Jumbos' drive to finish what they started.
"[Last year] set the tone for what we wanted to do," said Berube, who was named the Women's Basketball Coaches Association New England Coach of the Year yesterday. "The heartbreak of last season, hearing that we didn't make the NCAA Tournament, it made us hungrier. We were doing everything possible this season to put ourselves in a position to make it to the NCAA Tournament."
What ensued was the greatest season in 36 years of Tufts women's basketball, one in which the Jumbos recorded a program-record 26 wins, earned their first-ever trip to the NCAA Tournament and embarked on a magical tourney run to the Elite Eight.
From the outset, Tufts gave every indication that this season was going to be one for the record books. The team began the year by putting together the best start in program history, rattling off 12 consecutive out-of-conference wins ahead of its Jan. 18 NESCAC opener, a loss to Amherst.
In all, Tufts went 14-0 against one of the toughest non-conference schedules in the country, which included matchups with five teams that wound up appearing in the NCAA Tournament, a visit to reigning MASCAC champion Fitchburg State and an extra game against perennial NESCAC powerhouse Bates.
"It was non-conference losses that kept us out of the tournament last year, so we learned from that," sophomore guard Vanessa Miller said. "It was a huge boost. Anytime you can put that many wins up - and to do it so convincingly, in a lot of cases - you're going to get a confidence boost, especially so early in the season. Going into our first NESCAC game, we felt extremely ready and extremely confident."
But it was in that first conference game, a showdown against fellow unbeaten Amherst, that the Jumbos were tripped up for the first time this season. A buzzer-beater by sophomore forward Samantha Swensen lifted the Jeffs to a 64-62 win and dealt Tufts one of just two NESCAC setbacks on the season. The loss wound up looming large when both teams finished tied atop the conference with 7-2 marks, since with the head-to-head tiebreaker, Amherst earned both the top seed and home-court advantage in the NESCAC Tournament.
But otherwise, the Jumbos had little trouble within the conference, particularly against a pair of longtime NESCAC powers, Bates and Bowdoin. On Jan. 26, Tufts completed a season sweep of the Bobcats, holding a lineup with three one-time All-NESCAC players to 24.6 percent shooting in an impressive 61-46 road win.
Three weeks later, while celebrating Senior Weekend, the Jumbos welcomed seven-time defending conference champion Bowdoin to Cousens Gym and delivered their best regular-season performance of the 2007-08 campaign, blowing out the Polar Bears 83-56 and in the process breaking the program's wins record of 19.
"That was definitely one of the most exciting games," senior co-captain Khalilah Ummah said. "It wasn't like it was a close game where we barely beat them. We went out there, played well and won by a pretty decent amount. To actually be able to play one of best games against a team that we haven't beaten was exciting."
Tufts rode that win into the NESCAC Tournament, where it held the No. 2 seed and was considered a contender to bring home its first-ever conference title. But in one of the few letdowns of the season, the Jumbos fell short, dropping the championship game to top-seeded Amherst 59-53.
"It's hard to say that we are disappointed about the season in any aspect, because to be the winningest team in Tufts basketball history, there's nothing disappointing about that," Miller said. "But we feel as though [winning NESCACs] was something we should have done and something that we should have been able to pull out. We know that we didn't play our best basketball, and that's the most frustrating thing about it ... Ultimately, you want to win a NESCAC championship, but it's a very tough league."
Tufts would be faced with another history-making opportunity one week later, when the NCAA selection committee awarded the team its first-ever bid to the Big Dance. This time around the Jumbos responded, winning a pair of opening-weekend games against Wheaton and Mount St. Mary to reach the Sweet Sixteen.
To go any further, however, Tufts had the monumental task of getting by the nationally ranked No. 5 Mary Washington Eagles, a team that reached the 2007 Final Four and boasted an All-American center in senior Liz Hickey. Thanks to a suffocating defensive effort that proved to be the trademark of their NCAA Tournament run, the Jumbos pulled off the upset 48-45, securing the biggest win in program history.
"I feel what separated our team this season compared to other seasons was our ability to stay composed and pull out wins in the end," Ummah said. "In the past, a lot of times, if we got down in the last few minutes, we wouldn't necessarily win. To pull out that 48-45 win when there were a lot of nervous moments at the end of the game was something that wasn't always possible with a lot of our past teams."
An Elite Eight loss to Messiah the following evening ended Tufts' season at 26-4, but not before the Jumbos accrued a slew of milestones along the way. Thanks to their tournament run, they finished with their highest-ever ranking in the D3hoops poll, ending the season at No. 12.
Individually, Berube recorded her 100th career coaching victory on March 1 and now sits 35 wins shy of first on the program's all-time wins list. Meanwhile, Ummah became the first player in 13 years to average a double-double, posting 12.9 points and 10.0 rebounds to go along with a program-record 66 blocks this season.
In just her first season as a starter, Ummah put together a career-best year that she parlayed into several postseason honors, including Tufts' first-ever NESCAC Player of the Year and All-American honors.
A big reason for Ummah's success was the addition of junior center Katie Tausanovitch, who transferred from Div. I William and Mary and gave the Jumbos a second six-foot presence in their frontcourt.
"Khalilah would not have won these awards if it wasn't for Katie," Berube said. "Defenses were not able to double-team K that often with Katie on the other block. I'm sure it's a huge transition from playing Div. I to playing Div. III, but I think she's done an amazing job of coming in here and being a leader already. She gets it and knows what this is about, and so I'm excited to be coaching her for another year."
Another key newcomer to this year's squad was freshman point guard Colleen Hart, who immediately stepped into a starting role and finished second on the team in scoring. A major threat from beyond the arc - her 56 three-pointers were just one shy of the program's single-season record - Hart went on to win both conference and regional Rookie of the Year honors.
"The coaches and the team help with the transition," Hart said. "It's really a tribute to the upperclassmen and the leaders on the team that they are so helpful in showing people, especially freshmen when they come in, how things are going to be and how to adapt. I think they help all us freshmen adapt pretty easily."
Besides Ummah, the team will graduate fellow co-captain Jenna Gomez, a four-year contributor who led the team with 47 steals. But Gomez's contributions often went beyond the stat sheet.
"Jenna's kind of the personality of the team," Berube said. "She's someone that everybody looks to in order to get the emotional pulse of the team. She's got a loud voice in that when she talks, people listen. She's been ... mature with her game, but also with her leadership."
For those who will be coming back, the challenge won't be unlike that which the team faced coming into this season: build and take the program to the next level.
"But by no means do any of us who are left think that this will be the highlight of our career here," Miller said. "People are very determined to take this and run with it and to continue to be a contender on the national level. Hopefully that means we'll get that Final Four bid and eventually get to the national championship game. That's a very realistic goal that we have for the next couple of years."
