Courtesy of Brian Beard

Last weekend, the women’s basketball team (18–1; 6–0 NESCAC) claimed two back-to-back victories against Hamilton College (9–10; 1–4 NESCAC) and Amherst College (15–5; 4–2 NESCAC). The Polar Bears won against Hamilton 59–50 on Friday and defeated Amherst 57–52 on Saturday.

Forward Melissa Leone ’27 talked about the team’s mindset going into the game.

“[Amherst and Hamilton] are both very strong teams in the NESCAC…, [and] every NESCAC [matchup] can be anyone’s game,” Leone said. “We just had a really strong mindset of playing our pace, our tempo…, doing what we do best and displaying our finesse over other teams.”

The Polar Bears were grappling against the Mammoths for points. When Amherst took the lead in the third quarter, the Polar Bears rallied together to take points back. The game ended with an exhilarating 57–52 win.

“I think we all just relied on each other. There was this one timeout Coach [Megan Phelps ’15] had in the middle of the third [quarter], and she was just telling us, ‘find your joy in playing.’ And we all just looked at each other—the bench had just awesome energy, and they were able to just have fun playing with each other,” point guard Jamie Yue ’28 said. “We have this phrase ‘13 first,’ which means it doesn’t matter who we’re playing. It’s just focusing on us and knowing that we all have each other’s backs.”

This support, both between team members and from spectators, heightened the team’s confidence throughout the games.

“We’re just playing the game, and everything kind of flows. We have such a great fan base in the community…. I think it’s really fun knowing that we have that support,” Leone said. “Those simple, small things that we do that don’t really take a lot of thinking make it a lot more fun, and it flows just for all of us.… It’s really great. We [also] love to [point fingers] if we get a good pass, and I think that’s a lot of the celebration and fun aspect of it.”

Yue said that the team excels when it comes to defense.

“I feel that we are really strong in our defensive communication, and a lot of that is what drives our offense and getting out in transition,” Yue said. “I feel like we are really fit, and that is something that allows us to perform really well in the third and fourth quarters.”

On the other hand, the team strives to work on building a stronger offense.

“We can get a little shaken up on offense or not taking the best shots for the scenario. I think my job as a point guard is to help try to manage and get those shots,” Yue said.

The Polar Bears will head to Vermont to face off against Middlebury College (11–9; 2–4 NESCAC) today and travel to Massachusetts to play against Williams College (10–10; 3–3 NESCAC) on Saturday. Learning from this past week, Leone shared the team’s goals for the final stretch of regular season play.

“I think we haven’t gotten to the point where we’ve really put a team away. Especially, these past few weekends, they were both strong teams, but I think there could have been a time during the game where we really could have put them away,” Leone said. “Just doing our roles and coming out strong, coming out on top in the NESCAC—I think that’s our ultimate goal.”