This Massachusetts women’s basketball team is well acquainted with the feeling of being on a roll.
UMass (16-6, 6-3 Atlantic 10) won a program-record 11 games, then hit a three-game skid in mid-January. Now that the Minutewomen are back on track, they’re looking to repeat their earlier run.
“We just hit some adversity that we hadn’t had yet,” captain Hailey Leidel said, looking back on the losing streak. “So we were just figuring out how to overcome that together, staying together, fine-tuning our offense and figuring out the right plays to make and the right looks to look for in those plays and everything. I think we just kind of settled down. We know we’re capable, we pulled it off, like we can and should.”
The latest example of “pulling it off” came Sunday against A-10 heavyweight Davidson, as the Minutewomen bounced back from a shaky first half and held onto a tight lead in the final minutes to secure a major conference win.
“Our second quarter, obviously, was not the best,” junior Sam Breen said, reflecting on the lessons learned in the win. “We gave up 28 points, so obviously defense that quarter wasn’t great, but then halftime, came out, held them to eight points in the third quarter, which is really good because Davidson is a really good scoring team. So, if we play like that for the full 40 minutes, not giving any slips, that would be huge.”
After the signature win of a season over Davidson, the Minutewomen go back on the road to face A-10 cellar-dweller George Mason (7-15, 1-8 A-10) on Wednesday. The Patriots have been on the wrong end of the equation of late, losing their last eight games, including a 20-point loss to Duquesne.
Far from a pushover, however, this was a team that the Minutewomen were quite familiar with last season, where George Mason earned a 70-52 win in the Mullins Center before taking UMass to double overtime in the first round of the A-10 Tournament.
“They do a great job executing the half-court, they take advantage of their strengths,” UMass coach Tory Verdi said. “Defensively, we’re going to see a variety of defenses, and we’ve got to make sure that we do a great job of executing, we’ve got to do a great job boxing out and rebounding.”
The Patriots are led by guard Nicole Cardaño-Hillary, the reigning A-10 player of the year, who scored over 20 points in both matchups with UMass last year. This year, she’s averaging 17.6 points per game, with the high-water mark coming in a 41-point outing against Penn State back in November.
“The key to beating them is just shutting her down,” Leidel said. “Taking her away, because even if she’s not scoring, she’s setting up their offense. So we definitely want to take her away, just out-physical them, be more aggressive, execute and do everything we were doing in that last game.”
For the Minutewomen, the offense has run through Leidel and Breen, who combined for 51 of UMass’ 70 points against Davidson. The last two games have seen some improvement on the shooting woes that hamstrung the Minutewomen for a week and a half, although outside of Leidel, the production hasn’t been there from the guards.
“We can play inside or outside,” Leidel said. “I feel like we have a lot of scorers who can heat up, it just depends on the game and the matchups we have, on who really feels like they need to or who gets going.”
Tip-off is set for 7 p.m. Wednesday at EagleBank Arena in Fairfax, Virginia.
Thomas Haines can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @thainessports.
