PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Along with the men’s Division 1 first and second round games at PPG Paints Arena Friday and Sunday. The NCAA Division 3 Women’s Final Four is at the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse Thursday and Saturday.
Amherst faces Wisconsin-Whitewater at 5p and Hope against Trine at 7:30p in the semi-finals on Thursday.
Here are a few storylines and overview of all four teams.
· The Wisconsin-Whitewater player coached in college by her mom and dad.
· Amherst is on the verge of a third national championship in six years.
· A Hope College team that had a 61-game winning streak.
· Trine making its first Final 4 and facing their long-time nemesis.
Wisconsin-Whitewater (27-4)
The Warhawks making their fourth appearance in the Final Four and led by an aggressive defense forcing 22.7 turnovers a game with 12.8 steals a game. Junior forward Aleah Grundahl shoots 51% from the floor and scoring 16.3ppg.
Warhawks head coach Keri Carollo is in her 20th season and her husband is an assistant coach. Joe Carollo moved over from the men’s team 14 years ago and now their daughter, Kacie, is the fourth leading scorer as a freshman guard.
“It’s incredible,” Carollo said. “I try not to think about those types of things because I’m so focused on really what we need to do to get the job done this weekend. Hopefully in a few months or maybe a few years I will be able to look back and reflect back on how special this really is.”
“I know Kacie is my daughter but I look at all of our players as my daughters. This is special for all of us. These ladies have done a tremendous job in just really embracing our family and the family concept. I feel like it has really set our program apart, which is really special.”
Wisconsin-Whitewater has a pair of fifth-year seniors. Johanna Taylor transferred from Wisconsin-Madison (Division 1) and Rebekah Schumacher, who had a key steal in the third round and scored 23 points in the Elite 8 win. Both also were student-teachers during the season, noting how difficult it was at times juggling everything.
“I knew it was going to be the hardest semester, but I knew it would be worth it,” Schumacher said. “I got to end my day at practice and in a good mood.”
“They may have made me cry a little bit,” Taylor said. “When I first told them that I was a basketball player. They were just so enthralled. Some came to the games, it was an amazing support system to see. They all made little basketballs. It was pretty cute.”
They said it’s a pretty tight-knit community as far as support. There are 15,000 residents of Whitewater, Wisconsin and 11,000 students.
Amherst Mammoths (25-3)
It’s a team that felt like they were moving towards a potential national championship in 2020 when the season was stopped due to COVID-19. The Mammoths won their first two games of 2020 NCAA Tournament by a combined 44 points.
“It’s a difficult situation, obviously our season was cut short and last year we didn’t play at all,” said head coach GP Gromacki. “It does but it in perspective. It was unfortunate, but we understand the situation at hand was way bigger than playing basketball.”
“I remember the feeling our sophomore year when the season got cancelled right before our Sweet 16 game,” said senior Courtney Resch. “That sort of sat with me for two years and now to have the opportunity to play in Pittsburgh. It’s really, really special especially for the five of us.”
Resch said that has made this year really exciting because they started this year unsure how COVID would affect them. Only five members of the basketball team were on campus last year, but she says they’ve come back committed and ready to work from day one.
Gromacki has won three national championships at Amherst, including back-to-back unbeaten seasons in 2017 and 2018.
“You recruit great student-athletes,” Gromacki said of the secret of his success. “People that care about each other as people, that love the game of basketball and work hard.”
“It’s pretty difficult and rigorous at Amherst but it’s all worth it in the end-on and off the court. They are more than basketball players. They just have a commitment to try and win national championships. When you have that in your student-athletes, it makes it a lot easier to coach.
Amherst is holding opponents to 49 points a game, .318 field goal percentage and averaging 5.3 blocks per game. Resch is their stat filler-2nd in minutes, assists and rebounding, 4th in field goal percentage and made threes, 5th in steals and tops in blocks.
Hope Flying Dutch (30-1)
The preseason number one team in Division 3 that had a 61-game winning streak snapped against its Final Four opponent Trine on January 26. They bounced back to win the rematch in their conference tournament title game. Another team that saw a shot at a national title taken away when COVID halted the 2020 season and have had a bullseye on them all year.
Senior Olivia Voskull said key was not pushing talk of high expectations to the back-burner, but facing it head on and acknowledging that it’s there.
“Verbalizing what we are feeling in the moment,” said senior Kenedy Schoonveld. “Being vulnerable with teammates when those expectations come up or you are feeling a lot of pressure. Just being able to talk about that in the locker room or one-on-one with a teammate has been very helpful.”
“I will have to give a lot of credit to having those 18-year-olds on our team because they are funny,” senior Sydney Muller said of their five first-year players. “They are silly and doing TikTok dances. I just feel like having them as part of the team takes so much pressure off of us because the environment is always so fun or silly. That takes all of the stress off of you and you can play pressure free.”
It's not always that coaches can go back to their alma mater and have success. Brian Morehouse took over the program in 1996 and went 15-12, the following year Hope was 16-11. Since that point, Morehouse has led the program to a record of 667-68.
“I believe in it,” Morehouse said. “I believe in every bit of fabric of Hope, from the academics, to the Christian dimension to the kind of people we attract to Hope with the diverse way of thinking.”
“The key to getting to Final Fours is you better have players that shouldn’t be Division 3 players. You’re not getting to the Final Four if you have Division 3 players. You have to have Division 1 work ethics along with higher talent than what the typical Division 3 player is. We have been able to do that over my 26 years.”
“We lead the nation in attendance every single year playing meaningful games in a community that really values women’s basketball. I think that’s the secret sauce is when you mix all of that stuff together you come up with a place that really good players want to attend. Then it allows you to be a really good coach because you can put them in positions to be successful.”
Trine Thunder (28-3)
A theme with all of these four teams is good defense. Trine’s is the best of them, albeit slightly, giving up just 47 points a game. The number is actually lower in the NCAA Tournament, allowing 43.7 points a game. Trine’s coach sounds like old Pitt coach Jamie Dixon where defense and rebounding is mentioned about every fifth word.
Blugold head coach Andy Rang said he’s honest when recruiting kids that if they can’t play defense, they may not see the floor. He said they really get after it at practice and if they screw up, they know they will be running as punishment.
“Defensive stops are amazing,” said Trine senior Tara Bieniewicz. “I think our bench gets more hyped if we get a big stop or a shot-clock violation then a 3-pointer. Defense is our passion.”
It’s the first ever Final Four team in Trine history and the school is sponsoring a fan bus and they expect a lot of students at the game on Thursday. They are facing the team they just lost to by four in the MIAA Championship game, Hope College.
“I think it says a lot about our conference and how strong our conference is,” Rang said. “I feel like sometimes the MIAA gets overlooked. It’s a real testament to our conference that we are sitting here playing each other in a Final Four.”
“Personally, this is great,” said senior Kelsy Taylor. “Just to see them again, this is real great. Some people might say they are tired of playing Hope. This is going to be amazing. This is a big game, Final Four, the NCAA Tournament against Hope your conference rival. How better can it get?”
Rang remembered his first year as an assistant at Trine when they lost to Hope by 50 points.
“It does seem like Hope has dominated us, but three years ago we beat them three times,” Rang said. “They’ve had some really good players the last couple of years. They’ve beaten us a few times, but every game has been really close.”
“We are excited to play them again. It just happens to be for a big, big prize this time.”