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The road that will take William & Mary into an NCAA Tournament clash with Texas women's basketball on Saturday began with a declaration on the bus ride home from a defeat at Campbell on March 8.
The message came from Bella Nascimento, the Tribe's senior leading scorer, who'd just walked off the floor with a defeat for the seventh time in eight games.
"We are not quitters," Tribe coach Erin Dickerson Davis recalled Nascimento saying.
She couldn't have been more right.
William & Mary concluded the regular season with an 11-18 record, finishing ninth in the Colonial Athletic Association. But the Tribe began their conference tournament with a victory over Hofstra, then beat three of the league's four best teams to steal the CAA's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament ‒ the first trip to the dance in program history.
HORNS: Texas basketball: For Longhorns, the road to Tampa goes through Austin (and Birmingham)
And William & Mary didn't waste its ticket. The Tribe beat fellow 16-seed High Point, 69-63, at the Moody Center on Thursday night to earn the right to face top-seeded Texas.
Nascimento lit the emotional match that helped bring the Tribe to March Madness, and she proved to be the driving force behind William & Mary's historic win, too, scoring a game-high 24 points and grabbing five key rebounds.
Speaking with the media postgame, Nascimento made one thing clear: She didn't come to Austin for a participation trophy.
"We're excited to step on this floor again," she said. "It's another opportunity to play basketball, which we're all here to do. This is a business trip. We think we could beat any team, and that's what we're going to out and show the world that we can do."
BOOKER: How Madison Booker nurtured her head-turning game despite a lowkey personality
William & Mary followed a formula the Longhorns would be proud of to their win on Thursday. It turned 15 offensive rebounds into 12 vital second-chance points and held High Point under 40% from the field for just the second time in its last eight games.
The Tribe used its defense to stay in the game early, when Dickerson Davis sensed that the occasion was overwhelming her team's nerves. She used an early timeout to calm her team down.
"They were so nervous," Dickerson Davis said postgame. "I spent the entire day figuring out how to calm their nerves. I kept saying, 'Oh, I need to figure out what things I want to execute after timeouts and all of this stuff.' And I couldn't focus on it because I needed to make sure that my girls were OK."
For the fifth time in five win-or-go-home games, Dickerson Davis' players showed her that they were more than OK.
Throughout that entire process, she said, she's refused to look ahead, devoting her full focus to that day's opponents. She kept to that standard for Thursday's contest. Now, it's safe to shift her eyes toward the Tribe's toughest opponent this season.
The Longhorns will be the second power conference foe for William & Mary this season. The first was Maryland, which handed the Tribe a 107-57 defeat on Dec. 19.
"I do want them to embrace this," Dickerson Davis said. "I want them to have a good time. You're about to play against a team that ‒ respectfully to every other basketball coach ‒ should get to the Final Four.
"It's just going to be such a fun time, a fun environment. I have to assume it's going to be wild in here. And so to be able to have that kind of experience, how could you be mad?"
Reach Texas Insider David Eckert via email at [email protected]. Follow the American-Statesman on Facebook and X for more. Your subscription makes work like this possible. Get access to all of our best content with this tremendous offer.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: March Madness: Why Texas basketball's first foe has something to prove
Continue reading...
The message came from Bella Nascimento, the Tribe's senior leading scorer, who'd just walked off the floor with a defeat for the seventh time in eight games.
"We are not quitters," Tribe coach Erin Dickerson Davis recalled Nascimento saying.
She couldn't have been more right.
William & Mary concluded the regular season with an 11-18 record, finishing ninth in the Colonial Athletic Association. But the Tribe began their conference tournament with a victory over Hofstra, then beat three of the league's four best teams to steal the CAA's automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament ‒ the first trip to the dance in program history.
HORNS: Texas basketball: For Longhorns, the road to Tampa goes through Austin (and Birmingham)
And William & Mary didn't waste its ticket. The Tribe beat fellow 16-seed High Point, 69-63, at the Moody Center on Thursday night to earn the right to face top-seeded Texas.
Nascimento lit the emotional match that helped bring the Tribe to March Madness, and she proved to be the driving force behind William & Mary's historic win, too, scoring a game-high 24 points and grabbing five key rebounds.
Speaking with the media postgame, Nascimento made one thing clear: She didn't come to Austin for a participation trophy.
"We're excited to step on this floor again," she said. "It's another opportunity to play basketball, which we're all here to do. This is a business trip. We think we could beat any team, and that's what we're going to out and show the world that we can do."
BOOKER: How Madison Booker nurtured her head-turning game despite a lowkey personality
William & Mary followed a formula the Longhorns would be proud of to their win on Thursday. It turned 15 offensive rebounds into 12 vital second-chance points and held High Point under 40% from the field for just the second time in its last eight games.
The Tribe used its defense to stay in the game early, when Dickerson Davis sensed that the occasion was overwhelming her team's nerves. She used an early timeout to calm her team down.
"They were so nervous," Dickerson Davis said postgame. "I spent the entire day figuring out how to calm their nerves. I kept saying, 'Oh, I need to figure out what things I want to execute after timeouts and all of this stuff.' And I couldn't focus on it because I needed to make sure that my girls were OK."
For the fifth time in five win-or-go-home games, Dickerson Davis' players showed her that they were more than OK.
Throughout that entire process, she said, she's refused to look ahead, devoting her full focus to that day's opponents. She kept to that standard for Thursday's contest. Now, it's safe to shift her eyes toward the Tribe's toughest opponent this season.
The Longhorns will be the second power conference foe for William & Mary this season. The first was Maryland, which handed the Tribe a 107-57 defeat on Dec. 19.
"I do want them to embrace this," Dickerson Davis said. "I want them to have a good time. You're about to play against a team that ‒ respectfully to every other basketball coach ‒ should get to the Final Four.
"It's just going to be such a fun time, a fun environment. I have to assume it's going to be wild in here. And so to be able to have that kind of experience, how could you be mad?"
Reach Texas Insider David Eckert via email at [email protected]. Follow the American-Statesman on Facebook and X for more. Your subscription makes work like this possible. Get access to all of our best content with this tremendous offer.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: March Madness: Why Texas basketball's first foe has something to prove
Continue reading...
