LEWISTON – At college tournament selection time, when the dribbling stops and your season is succinctly summarized on a sheet of paper in a faraway conference room, sometimes who you’ve played is as important as who you’ve beaten.
Bates College had the kind of women’s basketball winter that looks better between the lines than in black-and-white. Fortunately for the Bobcats, the committee did a little digging and anointed Bates one of five teams from Maine in this year’s Division III field.
“I understand that we played probably the toughest Division III schedule in the country, with at least five or six Top 25 opponents,” said Bates coach Jim Murphy. “But a loss is a loss is a loss. (You don’t expect) the committee to choose a team that is 19-8.”
Although one popular small-college sports Web site reported selections Sunday night, the NCAA released its official bracket Monday morning. All five Maine schools have been assigned to the same region, with Southern Maine and Bowdoin hosting sub-regional games on Friday and Saturday.
Three of the area schools will converge at Hill Gymnasium in Gorham, where consensus No. 1 Southern Maine (27-1) welcomes Maine Maritime (23-5) and the University of Maine at Farmington (24-4) meets Norwich (23-4) on Friday night. The winners will play Saturday, with USM having a good chance to host the sectional on March 10-11 if the Huskies survive their first and second-rounders.
Bowdoin (24-2) hosts Colby Sawyer (23-4) at 7 p.m. Friday, immediately following a match-up between Brandeis (19-4) and Salem State (23-4).
As for Bates, which lost at home 68-58 to Bowdoin in the New England Small College Athletic Conference championship Saturday, the Bobcats will hit the road to Newburgh, N.Y., and play in what appears to be a well-balanced bracket. Bates will encounter Bridgewater (Va.) College (22-6) on Friday. With a win, the Bobcats would take on either host Mount St. Mary (25-3) or Baruch (22-6) the next day.
Expansion helped Bates
The Division III women’s field increased from 50 to 63 teams this season, and that expansion probably opened the door for Bates. With 38 conference champions receiving automatic bids and four additional berths reserved for unaffiliated teams, 21 spots were available to conference runner-ups.
In addition to Bates and Bowdoin, NESCAC rivals Williams and Wesleyan also made the field.
Murphy wasn’t flagrantly stumping for his team’s at-large candidacy, as many Division I coaches do on their selection Sunday. He predicted after the loss to Bowdoin that Williams might be the only NESCAC team to join the Polar Bears in the tournament.
“Williams is 21-5, and they beat us, so why wouldn’t you take them? I really felt winning the NESCAC championship was the only way we could get in,” Murphy said.
Only eight other teams with fewer than 20 wins and four others with eight or more losses made the cut.
But that tough schedule Murphy acknowledged? “Brutal” is a more exact assessment, and Bates tackled most of the non-conference slate without three of its five starters. Meg Coffin (17.1 points, 10.8 rebounds per game) sat out Bates’ first five contests, including a 66-48 loss at USM, with back spasms. Matia Kostakis (12.1 ppg) and Jackie Powers (9.5) didn’t suit up until second semester.
Eight of Bates’ first 11 games were played against NCAA tournament teams. The Bobcats won their first meeting with Williams and also defeated Springfield and Trinity (Texas). They lost by three points to UMF and Baldwin-Wallace. In January, they beat Bowdoin at home.
Bates and Wesleyan joined Bowdoin in making it to the third round last year, further enhancing NESCAC’s reputation with the committee.
Bridgewater also was an at-large choice after losing to Randolph-Macon in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference championship game. Bates could have the inside advantage with Coffin matched up against 6-foot-3 freshman Rebecca Henderson, but the Bobcats must be wary of Bridgewater guards Marsha Kinder (17.2 ppg, 78 3-pointers), Katy Herr, Shannon Scales and Amy Childs.
Closer to home
The USM-Maine Maritime game is a rematch of last year’s first-round game, won by the Huskies, 83-67, at the beginning of their march to the Final Four. Ashley Marble (16.4) and Auburn’s Megan Myles (12.8) are the mainstays for the Huskies, who ruled the Little East Conference for the 10th straight year.
MMA lost to UMF in the North Atlantic Conference championship, but the Mariners received an at-large bid as the league’s regular-season champion. Alyssa Burns of Dixfield (18.2) was NAC Player of the Year and has a strong supporting cast in Shelley Gott (17.5) and Julia Knights (15.6).
Farmington makes its first-ever visit to the NCAA tourney after moving over from the NAIA. The Beavers beat Bates at home early in the season, and junior star Kari Simpson might have the hottest hand in the state right now. Simpson averaged 27.3 points in the NAC tournament, including 41 against Lasell in the semifinals.
Bowdoin has won the NESCAC tournament in all six years of its existence and would match that streak with six consecutive trips to the round of 16 by winning twice this weekend. The all-around play of veteran starters Eileen Flaherty, Julia Loonin, Justine Pouravelis and Marisa Berne and the emergence of freshmen Alexa Kaubris of Rumford and Jill Anelauskas have kept the Polar Bears among the nation’s top five all season.
Possibly lurking as Bowdoin’s second-round opponent Saturday is Salem State, the only team to knock off USM.
Bates’ other bubble burst
The news wasnt all happy at Bates, as the men were snubbed for an at-large bid despite the first 20-win season in school history. Although four fewer teams qualify on the men’s side, the Bobcats felt that a 16-game midseason winning streak and victories over tourney teams William Paterson and Trinity (Texas) might put them over the top.
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