LEWISTON – They’ve known it all along. Now everyone else is finding out.

With a 4-0 start and impressive wins at Salem State and against the University of Southern Maine, the Bates women’s basketball team is only demonstrating what its believed since before the season began.

“We were all excited from the beginning,” said Olivia Zurek, a senior forward. “I feel like we’ve always been excited, and now we’re just showing other people what we already knew we could do.”

The Bobcats lost in the NESCAC final to Bowdoin last year, and it has provided motivation ever since.

“We knew we lost our last game last year against Bowdoin,” said Zurek. “We knew we had a lot of people coming back, and we were already excited. It just kind of fired us up a little bit about having a good year this year.”

Bates had plenty of reason to be optimistic. The Bobcats only lost one starter. With 10 regulars back, there was no reason not to think big.

“I think we had high expectations,” said senior forward Betsy Hochadel. “We played a lot during the fall and everyone worked really hard all fall and all summer.”

Zurek, from Arlington, Mass., was a first-team All-NESCAC selection and surpassed the 1,000-point mark in the win over USM. Hochadel, a Deering grad, also returns in the frontcourt while senior Heather Taylor, a Lincoln Academy standout, returns as the starting point guard. She was the MVP in the Salem State Tournament to start the year and led the NESCAC in assist/turnover ratio last year and was second in assists.

Sophomore Meg Coffin is the other returning starter and finished strong last year as the Bobcats starting center.

Also back for the Bobcats is Kyla Decato, a junior guard from Oxford Hills. She’s joined off the bench in the backcourt by Maggie Fitzgerald while centers Annie Whiting and Elizabeth Blakeley are back inside along with forwards Katie Franklin and Leah Schouten. The team has also been bolstered by newcomers Sarah Barton, Mary Hart, Lauren Mandel in the backcourt, forward Becca Buckler and center Katy Kerkian-Winton.

“I think we’re all used to playing with each other,” said Hochadel. “That definitely gives us an advantage only having lost one starter from last year.”

Though there’s always a sense of starting over with each season, the Bobcats still were able to pick up where it left off to some extent.

“I definitely feel like we jumped into things a lot quicker than we have in the other years,” said Zurek. “We’re more advanced at this point in the season.”

One thing Coach Jim Murphy tried to do early on was keep things basic and not throw a lot of strategies at the team.

“One of the things we haven’t done this year is overwhelm the kids with too much stuff,” said Murphy. “I think I was guilty of that in other years, saying we’ve got to have all our offenses in by the first game. I think simplifying things had helped our game.”

Murphy stresses three things for the Bobcats – defense, rebounding and running the fast break. If Bates does those three things, they expect to be in the ballgame.

“If we can play the type of defense we played against Southern Maine…, it was amazing the number of times the shot clock got under 10 seconds,” said Murphy. “Our defense was pretty good and pretty solid. We’re trying to get the kids to understand that there are nights where we won’t shoot it well, but if we play very good defense we’ll be in every game.”

Bates opened the season winning both games at Salem State. After an 80-49 win over Newbury, they beat the hosts 78-71. Then came the 61-37 win over USM. The Huskies were without Tiffany Jones, but beating the second-ranked team in the nation in Division III helped set an early tone for the Bobcats.

“I think we knew that we could beat USM, said Hochadel. “It just gave us extra confidence that if we play well and play our style of basketball, we can be successful.”

Bates was ranked 22nd in the most recent D3hoops.com poll. Bowdoin was ranked No. 1 while USM was 10th. Bates added a win over Husson Wednesday night.

Bates started the year 1-2 last year and wanted to get off to a better start. The 4-0 record certainly meets that goal, but the season is still young. The Bobcats haven’t changed expectations, but the early success has been positive reinforcement.

“My hardest job here with this team is to convince them that they’re a good basketball team,” said Murphy, whose team plays in the St. Joseph’s Tournament this weekend. “They can do some amazing things. We’ll show the film, and they’ll be like Oh my goodness, I missed a shot.’ I think it really helps us confidence-wise.”