Notables

By D3sports.com

Yes, they've got arguably the best center in the country, in 6-3 senior Hillary Klimowicz, the former Atlantic-10 rookie of the year at Division I St. Joseph's (Pa.), but there's a lot more to The College of New Jersey women's basketball team than that. The culmination of Klimowicz's three-year run at the school is this appearance in the national semifinals.

Unranked TCNJ started 3-3 but has won 24 of its last 25 games. They've won four straight away from Ewing, N.J., in the NCAA Tournament against ranked opponents to get to a meeting with No. 3 George Fox. That included a rally from 11 points down with 9:22 left to beat Tufts in the second round and a comeback from an early 10-point deficit to win at Rochester in the round of 16.

Longtime coach Dawn Henderson admitted that the Lions won ugly in their quarterfinal matchup with Scranton, Though they made only five second-half field goals, they held the Lady Royals to just five as well, and were able to erase a three-point deficit in the final four minutes, scoring their last 11 points from the foul line.

The team has taken great strides since the 3-3 start, during which Klimowicz missed time due to a rib injury, and great strides from a 13-14 season two years ago. Last year's team got to the second round of the NCAAs before losing to Mary Washington and its star center Liz Hickey.

This year, it was Klimowicz's time to rise.

"When you looked at us on paper before the season and saw the experience we had, I believed it was well within our ability to get to the Final Four," said Henderson "When we were 3-3, I wasn't as sure. We felt like we were out of sync and I wasn't sure what was going to get us out. But the players figured it out. They've worked really hard to live up to that potential."

Adjustments were made and players rose to the challenge. The team swapped out its man defense for a matchup zone, which with Klimowicz or 6-1 junior Alexandra Gregorek in the middle, made things miserable for opponents. Offensively, Henderson has described to several media outlets how her squad learned to play through Klimowicz rather than to her, a la Oklahoma and star center Courtney Paris.

"Everything is led by Hillary, but it's not a one-man show," Henderson said.

Indeed others have played very significant roles in this run. Sophomore guard Keri Washington hit a couple of shots against Tufts that sparked the Lions comeback. Point guard Nicole Diaz, who missed the first semester's worth of games, had 14 points and five assists in the Rochester win, and Gregorek chipped in 14 points and 11 rebounds. Diaz's backup, Karen Lassoni, hit the free throws that clinched the Scranton win. Gregorek, Kelsey Kutch, and Alyssa Michella are all averaging double figures in scoring, with Michella among the nations leaders with 80 3-pointers.

As for Klimowicz, she is averaging 20.1 points, 10.8 rebounds and 4.2 blocks per game, shooting 69 percent from the field and 78 percent from the free throw line. Her two assists per game are misleading because opposing coaches have noted that she is a fantastic passer as well.

"She brings her basketball, but she also brings that intangible of leadership," Henderson said. "During the season she often gives the team quizzes on scouting reports, or on things we learned that day. They actually take a pop quiz. She understands what it takes to prepare and that rubs off on her teammates.

"Hillary just plays at a different level, but she's the same in that everybody in the program, including her, has worked hard and tried to improve."

They've all improved significantly from Klimowicz's sophomore year, when there was the expectation she was going to take over the program and dominate. Instead, a foot injury limited her minutes. There was a valuable lesson that came with the struggles this season, one that they can apply against an undefeated opponent.

"That year I learned how to lose, and how to build upon that," Klimowicz said. "The others who experienced that first year with me, we don't want to feel that way again. That gives us extra incentive. This has been a great ride and I couldn't ask for anything more."

By Evans Clinchy
D3sports.com

Glenn Robinson is a 38-year veteran coaching the Franklin and Marshall basketball team. He's won 756 games, more than any other Div. III coach of all time, and captured 14 conference titles. When his Diplomats take the floor at the Salem Civic Center to face Richard Stockton on Friday night, it will be his fifth Final Four.

And "this will sound odd to people," he says, "but I've never been motivated by winning a national championship."

Not at all. Clearly he'd enjoy it, he says, but it's just never been a big deal to him.

"I know the history of this program," he says. "I still remember when it was a very big deal to us just to have a winning season. I still deal with the admissions standards, the academic requirements, the amount of work that our students do, and how that all balances with basketball … It's not just 'Hey, we're happy to be here,' but you know -- we really are happy to be here."

"If we win on Friday, then we'll play for the national championship. But if Stockton is better than us, we'll shake their hands, and we'll congratulate them. Either way, we've had a great season."

It's easy to see how this year's F&M team has been playing with house money. With one of the youngest teams in this year's NCAA Tournament, it's a wonder the Diplomats have even made it this far. Their two leading scorers, James McNally and Georgio Milligan, are a sophomore and a freshman respectively, and their lone senior, Daniel Selig, is a valuable sixth man but has never started a game. But has their inexperience really been a problem?

"It hasn't so far," Robinson said. "They clearly have shown their age at times, and they've done things that we'd prefer they that not do. But mostly, they've done very well so far. The biggest thing is they've improved. They've improved constantly, throughout the season and now into the postseason."

It hasn't been easy. The old adage is that veteran guards lead great teams in the NCAA Tournament, but the Diplomats have instead been led by the rookie Milligan, who has played 1,044 minutes this season and is among the nation's top 100 in assists and steals, and McNally, their scoring machine inside. Mike Baker, Anthony Brooks and Clay Scovill -- two sophomores and a junior -- round out their starting five. All are double-digit scorers.

F&M started its season 11-0, most of its wins via blowouts, before suffering the season's first loss at McDaniel on Jan. 13. A week later, they fell to a Gettysburg team that would go on to win the Centennial Conference title. Gettysburg, as it turned out, was a thorn in the Diplomats' sides all year, beating them once in January, once in the final week of the season on Feb. 18, and a third time in the conference tournament on March 1.

"We had trouble with Gettysburg this season," Robinson said. "They're a very strong, very cohesive team. We were in position in all three to win or send it into overtime, but they ended up winning all three. They just had our number this year, and they had a lot more experience than we did."

But after a rough patch at the end of February and into March, losing three of four, the Diplomats stormed back and went on the run that's brought them to Salem this weekend. They thrashed Wesley in the first round, 93-69, and survived a second-half surge from Brandeis the following night to squeak out a 65-63 win.

F&M leapt out to a 37-24 halftime lead over the Judges and widened it to as much as 20, but a Brandeis run in the second half, capped off by three straight threes in the waning minutes, made it a one-possession game. Robinson was just happy to get the win.

"We were very, very pleased that we got the big lead," he said. "Brandeis is a very good team, and to get a nice lead against them, we played very well. At one point we were up 20 points, and I'm guessing that they had not been down 20 all season. We were very pleased with the way that we were playing defense, and the fact that it was close at the end was what we had expected all along."

From there the Diplomats got by Salem State in the Sweet 16, again surviving a second-half run to win 67-61, and beat DeSales the following night to punch their tickets to Salem. Now they're here, and everything else is just gravy.

"We've been talking about being a cat with nine lives," Robinson said. "We're just looking forward to getting another chance."

By Andrei Berman
Special to D3hoops.com

The Washington University women's basketball team will likely complete its national semifinal game against Amherst in Holland, Mich., at around 6 p.m. Friday evening.

A little less than 700 miles away, in Salem, Va., the Washington University men's team will probably be entering second half play in its own national semifinal game against Guilford.

It's probable that, regardless of their own outcome, the Lady Bears will huddle around a computer screen somewhere on the campus of Hope College, the 2009 site of the women's Final Four. Cell phones in hand, text messaging fingers at the ready, the team will anxiously watch as the ‘other' Wash U. team seeks to close out its own semifinal opponent and continue its run at a second-straight national title.

And it's a safe bet that, regardless of the intensity of his own contest, Wash U's veteran men's coach, Mark Edwards, will briefly crack a revealing facial expression while pacing the sidelines of the Salem Civic Center. Edwards surely hopes that expression will come in the form of a smile, evidence that his close friend and colleague, Wash U's women's coach Nancy Fahey, has moved her team onto the championship game.

In many ways, the friendship and mutual admiration between the two veteran Wash U. basketball coaches as well as the subsequent bond shared between their two teams came about as a result of a peculiar set of circumstances. Fahey's arrival to St. Louis in 1987 happened to coincide with the inaugural season of the geographically diverse University Athletic Association.

The creation of the conference stemmed from the desire to form a competitive athletic league of nationally respected academic powerhouses. That goal was accomplished and the eight member schools have combined to send six teams to the national semifinals in the past two decades, with the duo of Edwards and Fahey alone combining for a fistful of national championship rings with a legitimate chance of adding two more this weekend.

But perhaps more than any school in the country, at any level of collegiate basketball, the five banners (four for the women, one for the men) that hang in the Washington University Field House are genuinely the result of a collaborative effort between two coaches and the players they have mentored over the last two plus decades.

Due to the vast distances in mileage between schools in the multi-regional conference, member schools play host to male-female double headers each Friday evening and Sunday morning during the grueling, NBA-like conference slate. As a result of traversing the eastern half of the USA on what all-conference forward Tyler Nading likens to "four-day retreats with a bunch of kids," the Bears and Lady Bears grow highly familiar with their partner squad both and off the court throughout each season.

Among the most gratifying aspects of Edwards' and Fahey's relationship has been the ways in which the two squads have continually come together during each of the last 23 seasons. According to the players and coaches alike, that bond has only been improved by the recent success of each program . "It really is like one program with two divisions," says Edwards of the team's unique relationship with its women's team.

"It's a genuinely true and caring relationship between the two teams," says Fahey. "We travel and play games on the road where we're in gyms where we're the only ones supporting each other. We understand what each program goes through and I think it trickles down to our players."

"I think what makes the relationship between our two teams so unique and special is that we have similar goals and we support the other team in their pursuit of that goal. We are their No. 1 fans and they are ours," said Halsey Ward, a guard on the women's team.

The tremendous success of both teams in 2008-2009 made those road trips easier to enjoy. Between the two teams, only one road game was lost this season and overall, the squads combined to tally 52 wins against a mere six losses.

"Having two winning programs generates such a positive attitude. It is a lot easier to fly back home from an east coast trip when two teams are happy, said Jamie McFarlin, who starts at forward for the women's team.



Still, some team members report a more practical reason for supporting their travel mates. "I find myself pulling for the women's team not only because I want them to win, but because the flights and bus rides are brutal when they lose," notes junior and UAA Player of the Year, Aaron Thompson.

Indeed, the unique relationship between the two squads has only been improved by the shared on-court success. Edwards and Fahey each guide programs that are widely considered to be among the nation's perennial D-III powers. Fahey led the Lady Bears to a string of four consecutive national titles from 1998-2001. Edwards is looking to lead his squad to its second straight title, with this year's team having reached Salem in each of the last three seasons.

"It [the relationship between teams] has definitely been strengthened. The senior class has been to 5 final fours combined and I think we can relate to each other with the high expectations that come with the territory," said senior and All-American point guard Sean Wallis.

"A lot of times some of the women's players can vent to us when things aren't going well and we obviously do the same. It's nice to have other people that understand your situation that aren't on your team that you can talk to," he added.

Nothing, of course, would make Edwards or Fahey -- and the players they lead -- happier than a final four weekend that results in two more titles. The two coaches and their top assistants have offices within feet of one another and regularly talk X's and O's. They will both be doing a healthy amount of scoreboard watching come Friday.

Yet the connectedness of the two squads and their coaches is one which extends far beyond victories and championship banners. When not formally competing against same-sex competition, select members of the teams have even been known to turn their camaraderie into a bit of healthy competition, H-O-R-S-E style. And, true to form for a group of collegians whose relationship sometimes borders on the familial, more than one interviewee was able to vividly paint a picture of the well-known shooting games between Thompson and his counter sharpshooter on the ladies side, the senior Ward.

Though Thompson made it a point to note that his field goal percentage was higher than Ward's, he conceded that in H-O-R-S-E, Ward had his number.

"I'd love to say that I have her in that category as well, but she just kicks my butt. She can flat out shoot the rock and the only chance I ever have at beating her is when I shoot out of her range. We decided that in our game of H-O-R-S-E we could only shoot three's and of the 11 games that I won, in all 11 of them I had to shoot about 80% on 25-footers to even have a chance.

Jill Brandt, a senior and one of six Lady Bears averaging between seven and nine points, struck a similar tone when describing the oft-times sophomoric off-court antics of the men's team.

She likened the men's team to the role of male siblings: "Brothers can be annoying, but for the most part they are just a lot of fun and always extremely supportive. We have a blast at dinners, hanging out in airports, and cheering each other on. Traveling is definitely not the same without them! Throughout the tournament, there is an endless stream of texts and calls saying good luck and congratulations."

"It's so awesome after we've won to look at my phone and see congratulatory text messages from Sean, A.T. and Ty," added Ward.

That sense of support and closeness will again be on display this weekend, but unlike last year, the ladies won't be there in person. After missing out on what would have been a return trip to the women's final four last season, almost every member of the 2007-08 women's roster made the 13-hour bus ride to Salem to support their male counterparts.

Not being at the actual games won't stop the teams from keeping close tabs on each other, however.

"As soon as our buzzer sounds, the first thing I'm going to think about is how the boys are doing," said Brandt.