After turning in its most successful season in the Carla Berube era, the women's basketball team was dealt a one-two punch on Sunday that cut its historic postseason run short.
Just hours after suffering a 64-48 championship game loss to Bowdoin, the league and nation's No. 1 team, the Jumbos learned that they had failed to qualify for the NCAA tournament.
But Sunday's disappointments were not enough to mar a season in which the Jumbos finished second in the NESCAC, commanding respect from even the conference's greatest critics. For a team that finished 3-6 in league competition during the 2005-06 campaign, there was nothing to be upset about in 2007.
"I'm proud of my team and I feel like it was a fairly successful season, especially in the second half of the year," Berube said. "We hit a tough stretch at the beginning of January after we got back from break, but we got together and learned valuable lessons in games that came down to the wire. We really developed great chemistry on and off the court, which was important to our success. The NESCAC season was better than I could have ever expected."
Apart from losing twice to Bowdoin - a team that only dropped one game the entire season - the Jumbos were flawless in the league, stepping up in the big games when it mattered most, and using their versatility to their advantage.
Perhaps it was this adeptness on both the inside and outside that made this team stand out amongst the recent Tufts squads. For years, the team has relied on solid play from behind-the-arc, but this season, with senior co-captains Laura Jasinski and Libby Park patrolling the paint alongside junior Khalilah Ummah, the Jumbos presented their opponents with a double-pronged attack - something that was near unstoppable when the team played to its full potential; however, the squad owed its success to more than just its distribution of talent.
"I think the main reason we were so successful was team chemistry and our common love of the game," senior Valerie Krah said. "This year was really just 14 players being on the same page at the same time and consistently sharing the same goal."
But in the end, Tufts may have shot itself in the foot with its inability to play 40 consistent minutes of basketball game in and game out. The Jumbos' 18-8 overall record put them on the bubble when it came time for the NCAA selection committee to pick its bracket for the national tournament.
Although it is impossible to determine exactly why Tufts was excluded from March Madness, the team certainly didn't do itself any favors when it lost to Wheaton - an arguably inferior opponent - at the buzzer on Jan. 23. Its streak of four straight losses from Dec. 31 to Jan. 9 also hindered a potential NCAA campaign.
"We didn't quite show up in some of the games in middle of season - against WPI and Wheaton," Berube said. "We didn't bring our defensive intensity. There were games where we weren't executing our offenses."
Despite the stumbling blocks, the team picked up the pieces and turned it on when it mattered most, rattling off seven NESCAC victories in the last few weeks of the season to guarantee a meeting with Bowdoin in the NESCAC championship game on Sunday.
"Throughout this year, everyone was skeptical of this team," sophomore Kim Moynihan said. "[This year] was [about] fighting through that, having a chip on your shoulder and showing people what this team is all about."
And if the team really did exceed all expectations in the league, much of the credit should go to the senior class - Jasinski, Park, Krah, and guard Taryn Miller-Stevens - which coped with the added pressure of losing last year's star, All-NESCAC guard Jess Powers, and transformed the team into a championship contender.
"What I liked about the Tufts team this year was they had four really good seniors," Williams women's basketball coach Patricia Manning said. "They really turned it on last month of season, and I felt they deserved [a bid to NCAAs] because they played their best basketball at the end of season."
"The leadership from our four seniors was just tremendous," Berube said. "We had quite a few freshmen and newcomers to the team and they did such a great job of developing and making strong bonds within the team. Sometimes that's more important than what you do on the court."
While the squad will certainly feel the strain from losing its senior class, for the rest of the 10 members of the team, there's always next year.
"Hopefully we'll be hungrier next year," Berube said. "Now we know what it's like to wait by the computer and not get that bid. Hopefully we won't even be in that position next year."
