DURHAM – There are no ghosts hiding in the locker room of the UNH women’s basketball team, and there are no elephants tucked away inside Lundholm Gymnasium. There are, however, a lack of banners hanging from the walls.
“I mean, we’ve never even been to an America East championship as a school before,” senior point guard Kristen Anderson said after practice earlier this week. “So I don’t think there’s so much an elephant in the room as just no footprints have been there and we want to be the first steps on the moon, per se.”
Using historical events – like the first man walking on the moon – to talk about this year’s run is fitting. These Wildcats have been making history all season.
A regular-season America East title, 25 wins, a 13-game win streak, a 15-1 record in America East play, the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament. All program firsts. All part of history now.
Yet, as the Wildcats (25-4) prepare to open the America East tournament Saturday at noon against eighth-seeded Stony Brook (12-17) in Portland, Maine, the last thing they want to talk about is all of the history they’ve made this season. Simply because they plan on making more.
“We’re just hungry,” Anderson said. “Hungry for another win, hungry for another championship. We’re not satisfied and we don’t want to end the season with anything less than an NCAA berth.”
Even though they have a higher winning percentage than more than half of the teams ranked in the Top 25, the ‘Cats will likely have to win the conference tournament and earn the automatic bid to get in.
“Stony Brook has nothing to lose,” UNH Coach Maureen Magarity said. “And in my opinion, we have everything to lose.”
The last time the AEC was awarded an at-large bid was in 2010 when Hartford finished the season at 27-4 but lost to Vermont in the conference tournament championship game. It’s only happened three times since 1997.
Non-conference losses to Cornell (15-10) and Yale (14-11) would also likely hurt the Wildcats’ case for an at-large bid.
Regardless of the outcome, Magarity hopes her team takes the time to savor the moments ahead.
“I told the girls, ‘Make this the best month of your life right now.’ … Seriously, besides maybe the birth of my children, when my team at Marist won (an automatic bid), that was really like the best day of my life,” said Magarity, who led the Red Foxes to their first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance in 2003-04.
“They’re such a special team and they’re so close. It would just be such a neat experience to remember for their whole lives, not just for their basketball careers.”
Resilience has been a theme of this year’s team, a trait the Wildcats learned from their coach. If it weren’t for the resilience of Magarity and her coaching staff, UNH’s picture-perfect roster may have never come together at all.
Magarity could’ve forgotten about players like Kat Fogarty and Olivia Healy four years ago, once they had both settled on schools other than UNH – despite Magarity’s recruiting efforts.
“I always feel like we recruit them hard and we love them,” she said, remembering when Fogarty committed to her alma mater, Marist, and Healy decided on Richmond of the Atlantic 10. “Whenever someone decides (where they’re going to school), I’m a big believer in wishing them nothing but the best because you just never know.”
She said it’s something she picked up from her dad, Army women’s basketball Coach Dave Magarity, after spending four years coaching under him at West Point. She spent a lot of her time on the recruiting trail then, trying to bring cadets to the United States Military Academy during a time of war. Talk about a tough sell.
“Some of these recruits are right on the border and they decide to go to higher levels but they know if things don’t work out, you never know,” Magarity said. “Luckily, they ended up coming back the second time around.”
Healy, who became eligible halfway through the season as a graduate transfer, was just as thankful to return to Durham as Magarity was to have her.
“UNH was right up there,” Healy said of the recruiting process. “It was a really difficult decision but I remember calling Coach Magarity and she said, ‘I wish nothing but the best for you.’ Ultimately, that’s why I came back here.”
If anyone knows the trials and tribulations of transferring, it’s Magarity, who left Boston College after one season during her college basketball career to return to her hometown of Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and play at Marist.
“When you do transfer, it’s almost like you get a second chance and you’re so thankful for that opportunity. I feel like that’s why (Fogarty, Healy and Brittni Lai) are so productive,” she said.
That resilience on the recruiting trail rubbed off, apparently, and was on full display when the Wildcats took the floor for their America East opener this season against the same team they’ll open the conference tournament against Saturday.
UNH trailed Stony Brook by 18 points with 7:50 remaining in the third quarter of that game but somehow managed a 49-46 victory.
“To think that’s the 1-8 game, that’s pretty crazy to me,” Kristen Anderson said. “I wouldn’t have thought that we were going to end up as the one seed and Stony Brook the eight seed.”
UNH trailed at some point in 11 of its 16 conference games – three times by double digits. The Wildcats, reflecting the resilience of the staff that assembled their roster, came back to win all of those games but one.
Cross Insurance Arena in Portland is home to one of Anderson’s fondest memories. The Greene, Maine, native led her Leavitt Area High School team to a state championship in that building in 2011, while teammates Ashley Storey (Cumberland, Maine) and Sarah Clement (Falmouth, Maine) also won state titles there.
“So there’s three people who have won state championships in that building alone, which is kind of crazy,” Anderson said. “We are excited to get back there. I’m excited to have friends and family out and hopefully we have another great memory in that building.”
The court setup is a little different than Lundholm because Cross Insurance Arena was built for ice hockey and was once the primary home of the AHL’s Portland Pirates.
“It’s on an ice rink and the court is in the middle of the ice rink so it’s kind of like the hoops are on islands,” Anderson said.
Healy didn’t seem fazed by the setup.
“We’ve all played in AAU tournaments across the country in all different kinds of gyms so we’re all familiar with stuff like that and adapt pretty quickly,” she said.
This is Portland arena where #AEPlayoffs will be held this weekend. As one UNH player described it, “It’s like the hoops are on islands.” pic.twitter.com/JY2UAvZTaa
— Michelle Berthiaume (@MonitorMichelle) March 2, 2017
The way the schedule is set up could also affect the Wildcats. The winners of Saturday’s games will have a quick turnaround and play again Sunday in the semifinals, something Anderson said she’s only done once in her UNH career. It may be unusual, but it’s not unfair.
“Everyone has to do it. It’s not like someone gets a bye,” she said. “You just try and hope you get enough rest for the next day.”
Magarity knows the coaching staff will also face new challenges.
“As a coach, I think you just have to be careful and if you do have a little bit of a lead, just be smart about who is out on the floor,” she said. “If I can sub early, I try to sub early, but at the end of the day, you have to win that first game.”
The one thing Magarity didn’t seem too concerned about was who might take the final shot if the Wildcats found themselves in that situation.
“Brittni (Lai) has hit big shots for us this year,” Magarity said. “I think Carlie (Pogue) could, Kat definitely wants to, I think Liv would totally be fine taking it, Kristen Anderson has been clutch throughout her career, too.”
After realizing she named the entire starting five, she laughed and added, “I think they’re all very capable of it.”
Magarity is well aware that that’s a pretty good problem to have heading toward the madness that March is known to bring.
And it may help the Wildcats put those elusive footprints on the moon.
(Michelle Berthiaume can be reached at 369-3338, mberthiaume@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @MonitorMichelle.)