PHOTO COURTESY OF
www.mckeephotoarts.com
The Hamilton College Women’s Basketball team has secured their spot in the NESCAC tournament for the first time since 2015. This past weekend, the Continentals went 1–1 to finish out their regular season play, defeating Connecticut College 61–55 on Friday, Feb. 14 and losing a close game to Trinity College in double overtime on Saturday, Feb. 15 (74–71). This gave the team a final conference record of 5–5 and overall record of 15–9 — one of the best in program history.
During their 2018–2019 season, the first season working with new head Coach Mahogany Green, the Continentals were unable to secure a conference win, despite numerous competitive games. The team came into the 2019–2020 season with the mindset that there was nowhere to go but up. While the team started off 0–2 during their first weekend of conference play against Williams College and Middlebury College, they only let it fuel their fire even more and reminded them of the mission they were on: to make the tournament. The following weekend they put up an exciting fight in their home opener against #1 Tufts University. That game came down to the wire as the team only lost by one point (63–62). Though they lost, this game marked a pivotal moment in the season that gave the reassured the team that if they could play with the #1 Division III team in the country, they could play with anyone.
The following day, the Continentals earned their first NESCAC win under Coach Mo against Bates College (63–59). This win got the ball rolling as it was the first of four straight conference wins against #5 Amherst College (56–55), Wesleyan University (58–51) and Colby College (61–44). Their final win against Connecticut College gave Hamilton an identical record to Trinity. Because they lost to Trinity, however, the team earned the №6 seed in the conference tournament.
“Honestly, I’m just really grateful for this season,” said Liz Arnold ’22. “I think that it was really nice that things were able to come together. The fact that we were able to overcome the difficulties that we had last year and for things to finally click after a lot of struggle was really motivating and I am excited to keep pushing the program further in the years to come and build off of what we did this year.”
Scout Lansing ’21 also added, “I am on top of the world right now and I can’t wait to play for a shot at winning the NESCAC championship this year. It gave our team the confidence we needed when we proved to ourselves and everyone watching that we were finally here and prepared to compete with every team in our league down to the final buzzer.”
Since the team proved that they have what it takes to play with and defeat nationally ranked teams, they are locked in as they look ahead to the end of the week when they will compete in the NESCAC Tournament quarterfinal against #4/#5 Bowdoin College. This is the third time that they have been in the tournament since joining the NESCAC in 2011. This has also given the Continentals a chance at making history and winning the NESCAC tournament for the first time. The game will take place on Saturday, Feb. 22 at 3 PM in Brunswick, ME. A win against the Polar Bears would mean the team would play in the semifinals on Saturday, Feb. 29.
