"Just like last year," men's basketball coach Bob Sheldon said Friday night, minutes after his team's devastating overtime loss to the Amherst Lord Jeffs. "One shot away from winning the game."
In recent years, the Jeffs have become an Achilles heel for this Tufts squad. Consider this stat: in the Jumbos' last 10 overtime games, a stretch dating back to Jan. 2005, they are 7-3, an impressive record given the competitive nature of their schedule.
All three losses are to Amherst.
The Jumbos' recent showdowns with the Jeffs have been painful. After ending their regular season with a 99-70 drubbing at LeFrak Gym last year, the Jumbos returned to LeFrak twice - once for the final rounds of the NESCAC Tournament, where they defeated Trinity in overtime before losing to Amherst in the extra session, and then again for the NCAA Sweet 16, where they suffered another overtime loss at the hands of the Lord Jeffs.
This year, the Jumbos emerged with back-to-back triple-overtime wins earlier in the season, but Friday's 96-92 loss to the Lord Jeffs brought them back down to earth once again.
Do the Jumbos have a shot at returning to the NESCAC final, the NCAA Tournament, and another shot at the Lord Jeffs?
Tufts has five losses, but four of the five came against teams that have been nationally ranked this season, including No. 2 Amherst. The Jumbos still have a shot at an NCAA bid, but they're going to have to compete with the strong upper echelon of the NESCAC, which includes Amherst, Trinity, and No. 12 Bates.
"[Trinity is] a really good team, and Bates is also very good, but we felt after the Amherst game that we could beat anybody," senior tri-captain Brian Kumf said. "We felt kind of robbed after that game, and we wanted to prove ourselves."
The Jumbos definitively proved themselves with a 17-point win, but the fact remains that Trinity is 12-2, as is Bates, a team that entered the weekend undefeated before suffering back-to-back losses to Trinity and Amherst. But based on the intensity with which they played the Lord Jeffs Friday night, these Jumbos know they can compete.
"We're one shot away from being 2-0 [in the NESCAC]," Sheldon said. "That was a great confidence builder. Now we know that we can play with anybody. But we've got to go to Bates next weekend, so it doesn't get any easier."
Indeed, less than 48 hours after tonight's game at UMass Dartmouth, the Jumbos travel to Lewiston to take on the Bobcats, who desperately need a win Saturday afternoon to avoid falling to 0-3 in conference play. Going into the crucial weekend, one thing is certain: confidence is not going to be a problem.
"We think we can beat anybody on any given night," Kumf said. "I think we showed that [against Amherst]. We kind of folded at the end there, but we're pretty pumped up now."
If the Jumbos get the win, they will be 2-1 against the conference's top three teams, which would put them in an excellent position to finish 8-1 and, at the very least, take second place outright. But with a loss this weekend, the Jumbos would be 1-2, as would Bates. This would open up a possibility that, if the Jeffs win the rest of the way, they would finish 9-0, and the other three top teams would be knotted up at 7-2.
The Jumbos, who are reeling from their four non-conference losses earlier in the season, may need a win this weekend to prove themselves to the selection committee. Last year's team was 9-2 before its first NESCAC weekend, but this squad has some work to do. Sheldon is optimistic that his squad has turned things around.
"I think this weekend we may have turned a corner," he said. "We're getting our swagger back, and we're getting a winning attitude. We just weren't going to let [Trinity] win on our court."
Senior tri-captain Dave Shepherd has guarded some of the league's best guards this past week, including junior Andrew Olson and sophomore Brian Baskauskas of Amherst, as well as senior Kino Clarke and junior Patrick Martin of Trinity.
"Trinity's guards are a bit tougher to guard sometimes, because everything is pick-and-roll for them," Shepherd said. "It's like they're playing on a playground; they'll shoot anything at any time, whereas Amherst is a lot more disciplined; they're going to run through their sets, so you kind of know what they're going to do."
The one NESCAC titan the Jumbos haven't yet seen is Bates. Last year, Tufts snapped the Bobcats' 16-game winning streak with a 91-76 win, behind 15 second-half points from senior tri-captain Brian Fitzgerald. This year, the Bobcats will be looking for revenge. Saturday will bring one of the two key games in the NESCAC this season, the other being next month's showdown between the Bantams and the Lord Jeffs at Trinity.
"Kino and Olson, that's going to be a great match up," Sheldon said. "They play the last game of the year, and that's going to be a great one to watch."
In the end, the Jumbos' goal is clear: they want a rematch with the Jeffs. And just like last year, that may come in the form of a conference title game. After last weekend, this team is ready.
"Amherst is as good as anyone in the country, and we played them tough," Shepherd said. "It just happened that the coin flip landed on the wrong side again. We'll get them next time."
Evans Clinchy contributed reporting to this article.
