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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Thursday, March 28, 2024

Women's basketball faces must-win situation this weekend

One weekend of play might seem inconsequential in the span of a 22-game schedule, but for the women's basketball team, tonight and tomorrow threaten to effectively end the season.

After two weeks of wandering, the Jumbos return home for a tonight's 7 p.m. game against the Williams Ephs (11-9, 3-3 NESCAC) and tomorrow's 3 p.m. contest against the Middlebury Panthers (14-5, 3-3 NESCAC).

After dropping games to conference leaders Colby and Bowdoin last weekend, there is a sense of urgency about this weekend's games.

"We kind of have to treat them as must-win games because we don't want to leave it up to what other teams do. We want to have control of our own destiny," senior point guard Shira Fishman said.

The Jumbos now stand at 1-4 in conference play, and hold eighth place in the NESCAC. Tufts needs to move up one place in the standings to qualify for the inaugural NESCAC playoffs at season's end. The Wesleyan Cardinals, who come to town next weekend, are only one game ahead of the Jumbos in the standings.

Two losses will all but eliminate Tufts from earning a postseason birth, and a split of the two games will still put tremendous pressure on the Jumbos to win next weekend's home tilts with Wesleyan and Connecticut College.

Williams is led by senior guard Liz Tilley, who is fourth in the NESCAC with 15.7 points per game, and looks to sophomore forward Abi Jackson on the boards (7.8 per game). In January, the Ephs split a home-and-home series with the Amherst Lord Jeffs, a team that topped the Jumbos by 10 points earlier in the season, and defeated a Babson squad to which Tufts also lost.

The Jumbos' home court advantage should be a factor, though, as Williams has had a tough time on the road this season. The Ephs are 3-5 away from Williamstown, and have won only one of three road conference games.

"We feel like if we play up to our ability we should be in a good position to win," Fishman said.

The Panthers, tied with the Ephs for fifth in the NESCAC, will provide the Jumbos with another tough match-up. They are led by sophomore forwards Kristen Hanley (16.8 ppg, 8.7 rbg) and senior Amy Lowell (9.0 ppg, 8.6 rbg). Hanley averaged 18 points and 12 rebounds in two Panther wins against Connecticut College and Wesleyan last weekend.

In order to succeed this weekend, the Jumbos will need leading scorers, sophomores Erin Harrington and Emily Goodman, to be on their game, and will need to rebound effectively as a team. Tufts has not out-rebounded another team since its win over Clark six games ago, going 3-3 in that span.

A few big shots and rebounds will keep opposing teams from going on the long runs that have killed the Jumbos during their past few games. A 21-0 run by the Bowdoin Polar Bears at the end of the first half and the beginning of the second last Saturday turned a seven-point Tufts lead into an insurmountable 14-point deficit. And if a few more second-half shots fell the night before against second-place Colby (a close game most of the way), the Mules would not have gone on a 21-10 run in the last two minutes to pull away.

"We will be trying to focus for the full forty minutes," coach Janice Savitz said. "It will be an advantage being at home."

One question that remains up in the air is the status of point guard Hillary Dunn. Dunn aggravated an old back injury last week and missed both of last weekend's games. Dunn, the Jumbos' most accurate three-point shooter as well as the team's second best ball distributor, is still questionable for this weekend's showdowns.