With a logjam emerging at the top of the NESCAC standings, Tufts will look to leap toward the top with two important road games this weekend.
It won't be easy, but the men's basketball team can still salvage a NESCAC playoff berth. At 0-5 and in last place in conference play, the Jumbos have lost six of their last seven, including all five conference games, to see a once promising 9-4 record slip to 10-10.
Last night the only undefeated team remaining in Div. III men's basketball, the UMass Dartmouth Corsairs, rode into Cousens Gym fresh off an 88-69 shellacking of Southern Maine Saturday, the 19th win of their perfect season.
It took just two weeks, four conference wins and a little bit of help from fellow NESCAC contenders for the women's basketball team to regain complete command of its fate in the conference.
Coming into the weekend, the men's basketball team knew its season was hinging on the outcomes of the upcoming two games. But what was billed as a must-win weekend turned into a nightmare, as the Jumbos dropped two crucial NESCAC contests against Conn. College and Wesleyan to fall to last place all alone in the conference standings.
Three days after letting a second-half lead slip away in Saturday's game against Bates, the men's basketball team made its own comeback this time around.
Returning home for the first time since Dec. 11th to face Bates in a critical conference showdown, the men's basketball team coughed up a 15-point lead before ultimately dropping the contest 72-68 in overtime.
After all the disappointment of last Friday night, when the women's basketball team started off 0-1 in NESCAC play with a loss to Amherst, the Jumbos emerged from this weekend right back in the thick of things.
In each of the past two seasons, the women's basketball team has suffered buzzer-beater losses to out-of-conference foe Wheaton. And just four days removed from a deflating last-second loss to Amherst, the Jumbos were set to take on the Lyons again, hoping to avoid a little déj? vu.
The women's basketball team lost its perfect season Friday in a matter of 2.4 seconds.
The men's basketball team entered the weekend on a three-game road winning streak, looking to both end its eight-game-road trip and open its conference schedule in a positive fashion.
If, as they say, lengthy road trips measure basketball teams, then the Tufts men's squad might need an extra ruler or two.
An unblemished record, the best start in program history, and now, a win against a leading challenger for the NESCAC championship. With 12 out of 23 regular-season games already in the books, the women's basketball team has the look of a serious national contender.
It's not often you can give up 88 points and emerge with a victory, but the men's basketball team did just that on Saturday, using its highest offensive output of the season to put away the Clark University Cougars, 98-88, at Cousens Gym.
It took just nine games over three weeks for the 2007-08 women's basketball team to write itself into the Tufts record books.
After the monster performance Jon Pierce let loose on the No. 16 Keene State Owls Tuesday night - 25 points, 11 rebounds and six blocks - any reasonable human being would question whether the junior forward would have anything left in the tank two nights later.
Forget the three overtimes needed last year. This time, 40 minutes was all the men's basketball team needed to dispatch the national No. 16 Keene State Owls.
The women's basketball team earned more than just an impressive win over a previously unbeaten New England foe Tuesday night. It also earned a shot at history.
Through one leg of the Triple Overtime Reunion Tour, the men's basketball team is back on track.
During their first four games for the Colby-Sawyer Chargers, senior Noelle Surette and sophomore Terri Duffy combined to average 38.5 points and 21.3 rebounds in the post.
