Sam Will worried she had made a terrible mistake. She may have been a star at Bishop Brady, a 1,000-point scorer and Miss New Hampshire Basketball, but things were different when she arrived at Cornell University last fall.
“I tried to mentally prepare myself for the adjustment to college basketball, but once the first couple weeks of the preseason hit, it was hard,” Will said. “I had a couple of moments where I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m not good enough.’ ”
Those moments passed as Will found the support she needed to balance Division I athletics and Ivy League academics. Once the 5-foot-11 guard from Loudon settled into the routine of her freshman season, Will felt like she belonged, and Big Red coach Dayna Smith feels the same.
“She’s doing great,” said Smith, who is in her 17th year as Cornell’s head coach. “There was a learning curve like there is for all freshmen, but she picks things up, she’s super competitive. She’s a versatile player that is developing every day going against our upperclassmen and building a really good base for her career.”
About 450 miles away, Tayler Mattos has been following the same freshman trajectory at Bowling Green University. Like Will, Mattos was a star in high school, winning a state title and two Player of the Year awards at Kearsarge. And like Will’s first few weeks in Ithaca, N.Y., Mattos had some eye-opening experiences when he arrived in Bowling Green, Ohio.
“When I first got here it was tough, coming from playing in the NHIAA in New Hampshire and now I’m going up against a guy like (Bowling Green senior) Demajeo Wiggins, who is an NBA prospect. It was just weird because he was so much stronger, so much faster,” said Mattos, a 6-11 center from New London. “That’s what they always say, bigger, stronger, faster. But once I hit the weight room, I got stronger and I was able to hang with him and just compete in practice, which is fun.”
Both Will and Mattos have postseason dreams as their first college seasons wind down. Will and the Big Red (11-12) have a chance to make the four-team Ivy League tournament as they head into their final two games of the regular season – Friday at Harvard and Saturday at Dartmouth, Will’s first college game in her home state. At 20-10, Bowling Green has assured itself a spot in the Mid-America Conference tournament, where the winner gets an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
“This is definitely why I decided to commit here,” Mattos said, “because making it to the NCAA Tournament would be a dream come true.”
When Will was suffering through her basketball doubts, Cornell assistant coach Val Klopfer provided some relief. Klopfer offered to listen, rebound or do anything else she could to help Will adjust. After that initial boost, Will and Cornell’s two other freshmen, Annika Hoff and Theresa Grace Mbanefo, began finding comfort in their new team.
“Our teammates were so helpful. I think the three of us have never felt more welcomed,” Will said. “We all felt bonded into this team.”
Will didn’t wait long to pay that welcoming kindness forward. When Hoff started a regimen to pack more weight onto her thin 6-2 frame, Will decided to do it with her because, “I didn’t want her to do it alone, and it’s been really helpful for me because I am like 10 times stronger than I was even two months ago.”
The support system for Will’s academic workload, which is currently centered around environmental studies, was built in Concord.
“Academics is definitely hard, but at the same time, Bishop Brady, as small as it is, was a great school to prepare me for this,” Will said. “The teachers at Brady, especially those who are teaching the AP classes, they really know how to … simulate a college class, so I feel like I was lucky to take the correct AP courses and have those Bishop Brady teachers, because they knew what they were doing.”
Adapting to an increased academic workload has also been a challenge for Mattos, and he’s taken full advantage of the help offered to athletes at Bowling Green.
“I’m not going to lie, there’s a lot more school work here,” Mattos said. “But we have great resources, great academic advisers that travel with us and everything. I’m actually flying out to Buffalo in like half an hour on a charter flight and our academic adviser is coming with us. We’ll do homework in the hotel and things like that, so that’s been a huge help for me.”
Will and Mattos have put up similar numbers this season as they acclimate to the college level. Will has played in 20 games and is averaging 7.1 minutes and 1.1 points per contest. She’s played 17 minutes in three different games and scored a season-high six points against Penn on Feb. 23.
Coach Smith said that was about what she expected out of Will this year. Next year, however, is a different story.
“She easily could (average 20 points per game),” Smith said. “She can shoot the 3, she’s strong, she can get to the rim, she has a really nice pull-up. She’s long on defense and can get a lot of deflections so we can get out into transition. I think her game could develop into that, and there’s still a chance for her to do a little of that this season, but having her in the spring and her understanding who we are and what we do, I think she could really do some great things for us next season.”
Mattos has played in 16 games for the Falcons and is averaging 4.1 minutes, 1.3 rebounds and 0.8 points. His playing time has decreased recently, but Mattos is still upbeat about his improvements and place in the program. He’s packing muscle onto his already thick frame. He’s figuring out the complexities of college defense, like how to deal with pick-and-rolls, overloading the help side, muscling your man out of the low block early. And he’s learning from Wiggins, a 6-10 forward who declared for the NBA Draft last year before deciding to return to Bowling Green for his senior year.
“For me personally, I feel like this is a developmental year,” Mattos said. “(Wiggins) is really getting all the minutes, but I’m shadowing him and going against him in practice every day, and that is really going to get me ready for next year when I’m going to be getting a lot of minutes.”
(Tim O’Sullivan can be reached at 369-3341, tosullivan@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @timosullivan20)