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| Christopher Newport athletics photo |
By Joe Sager
D3sports.com
Another weekend, another road trip for Christopher Newport’s women’s basketball team.
The top-ranked Captains (26-0) opened the NCAA tournament with a pair of wins at Johns Hopkins last weekend. They turn around again for a tip to Amherst, Massachusetts, for the sectional round this weekend.
“We only had eight home games all season, so I’d definitely say you could call us road warriors,” CNU senior Jess Foster said. “We’re excited to be heading back to Amherst.”
Christopher Newport plays a demanding schedule with various tournaments and matchups on the road. Since the Captains play in the Coast-to-Coast Athletic Conference, which has programs in several states, they logged plenty of miles with those matchups, too. One drawback – it left them with just one home game in January and another in February.
“I think the schedule has helped us get better. Coach Broderick has said that, even if we weren’t traveling for our conference, he’d try to get strong out-of-conference road games for us. It adds to the way we’ve had to adapt over the past two years,” CNU junior Katy Rader said. “It makes us battle-tested. We always try to find a positive out of it. It’s fun to go to new places. It keeps us focused, too. There are less distractions on the road.”
The Captains were hoping to return home to open NCAA Tournament action, but Christopher Newport’s men hosted the first round. So, that made the women hit the road for a short trip from Newport News, Virginia, to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
“You always want to try to play at home, but the NCAA has policies. The men have a good team and they earned it and it’s an (even-numbered) year. So, it is what it is,” CNU coach Bill Broderick said. “I thought we got as favorable a pod as we could for the first round. We only had to go three and a half hours away. A lot of our kids are from up that way and it felt like we had a great home crowd. I don’t mind playing on the road. We’re used to it.”
Certainly, it didn’t affect the team’s play. The Captains beat Mitchell, 89-42, and Mount St. Mary, 107-52.
“I am from Pennsylvania, but I was born in Baltimore. It was almost a hometown game for me,” Rader said. “It was fun getting to travel. It really wasn’t that far. It was nice to have a homecourt advantage with all the families that could come to those games.”
The wins pushed the team’s unbeaten streak to 43 games.
“We definitely had a great weekend in Baltimore. It was a pretty fun place for us to play,” Foster said. “Going into these tournament games, the ultimate goal is to be playing your best basketball in March, staying focused on your goals and seeing where that takes us.”
The Captains find themselves in a familiar position now. They head to Amherst to take on No. 13 Trinity, Texas (27-2). Two years ago, Christopher Newport was scheduled to play at the same place in the same situation against a Texas-based program (Mary Hardin-Baylor) before the entire tournament was halted due COVID-19 precautions.
“It’s pretty cool to see it all come full circle,” Foster said. “Now, we have another chance to go up there and play some good basketball. No one gets this far by accident. When you’re pulling teams from so many different regions, all these teams are good and have a lot of talent. We have to be ready for it. I am excited to play a team from Texas.”
While the Captains have the nation’s longest winning streak, they are eager to keep it going. Their last loss came to then-No. 1 Tufts, 70-65, on Dec. 28, 2019.
“It’s taken us two years to get back to where we left off,” Broderick said. “We have unfinished business and we’ll do everything we can to try to take care of it.”
Christopher Newport has one of the nation’s top offenses at 86.4 points per game. The Captains only give up 53.5 points per game as well. They lean heavily on their depth to pressure and push the pace.
“We like to go 12 players deep, at least. We don’t even use the term ‘starting five.’ We call it our ‘first 10.’ Sometimes, the groups are put together, not necessarily with all the best players. We try to create balance with each group,” Broderick said. “For these back-to-back situations, I think, sometimes, on the first day, maybe it’s not as big of a matchup problem for teams.
“But, we’re hoping it’ll take a toll in the second half if teams are playing the same seven or eight kids the whole time. We feel like it’s hard to prepare for us since we play so many players. We have three leading scorers, but we’ve had a lot of kids step up and have big games that weren’t necessarily among our top three scorers. So, teams have to scout probably at least 12 players and we have found it’s been an advantage if you’re lucky enough to get past first day. You seem to be more fresh.
“I think that’s what showed in our second game against Mount St. Mary. They had an emotional win over the home team and their point guard got in foul trouble. Those two things made that score look a lot worse than it really was. We had a good weekend in Baltimore and we seem to be hitting our stride at the right time.”