It was a familiar scene for the UMass women’s basketball team.
Last year, they made it all the way to the Atlantic 10 Conference championship despite a mountain of odds stacked against them. This year, they found their way back, riding a 23-win regular season and collecting a bucket of accolades along the way. The expectation was the same: to win the program’s first A-10 title.
This year, despite setbacks and consistency issues and injuries and sickness, the Minutewomen put together a complete game that Dayton could not keep up with. UMass secured its first-ever conference championship with a 62-56 win Sunday over the top-seeded Flyers at Chase Arena in Wilmington, Del., punching their ticket to the NCAA Division 1 Tournament.
The trip to the big dance marks the first time UMass will play in the tourney since 1998. The Minutewomen won’t find out the opponent or location of their opening-round game until the selection show on March 13 at 8 p.m.
Hometown hero Ber’Nyah Mayo gave the third-seeded Minutewomen the breathing room they needed late. Fouled twice in the last 34 seconds of the contest, Mayo splashed all four of her free throws to give the Minutewomen an eight-point lead and the eventual ‘W’ in front of her home crowd.
“(It’s a) super amazing feeling. They give me the world every day, they never told me no. I feel like this is for them,” Mayo said on winning in front of her family and friends. “I’m just glad they can be proud of me regardless, win or lose. They always tell me to just give my best, so this is honestly for them.”
The Minutewomen made a statement in the first quarter, just as they did in their quarterfinal against No. 7 St. Joseph’s on Saturday. Sam Breen opened the scoring for the Minutewomen with a triple, and the floodgates opened from there. UMass held the Flyers to just four points in the opening 5:27, racing out to a 13-4 lead that forced a Dayton timeout.
Destiney Philoxy got into foul trouble early. The guard picked up her third foul of the game on a dicey block call that sent her to the bench, leaving a huge hole on the floor with 6:37 left in the half.
Despite missing Philoxy, the Minutewomen got contributions from all over the floor. Breen was her usual self, carrying over her dominant performance from Saturday’s win into Sunday’s contest; she had 17 points by halftime, including a perfect 3-for-3 beyond the arc. Angelique Ngalakulondi was strong in the post, quietly putting up nine points and grabbing three boards. Sydney Taylor posted seven points, finding other places to score on the floor besides the three-point line.
It looked like Dayton might pull even late in the frame, going on a short 4-0 spurt to pull within two and forcing UMass head coach Tory Verdi to call a timeout with the score at 30-28. But the Minutewomen didn’t give them an inch; Taylor sank a free throw, Breen hit a jumper, and Ngalakulondi finished off the half with a giant layup and-one play with 26 seconds to go. UMass went into the half up 37-28.
The third quarter was all UMass, specifically all Makennah White and Wilmington native Ber’Nyah Mayo, who picked up right where Breen and Ngalakulondi left off in the first half.
“We didn’t want to get killed on the boards, so we needed to keep our post players on our post. We did a great job of hedging, (and) contained the dribble penetration,” Verdi said
The fourth was a nail-biter. Just 10 minutes away from history, UMass did its best to fend off the desperate Flyers. Dayton went on a quick 6-2 run to open the frame and cut UMass’ lead to eight points. White hit a turnaround jumper to make it 54-44, and White and Mayo sank back-to-back layups to regain that 10-point cushion with 3:56 remaining.
Down 12, Kyla Whitehead scored a field goal for Dayton and the Flyers capitalized on a turnover, kicking the ball out to Makira Cook for a triple. After a tense couple of minutes with no scoring, Erin Whalen hit a three again, the score now 58-54 with just 1:05 left.
But Mayo handled her business at the charity stripe in the final minute, and UMass earned a return trip to the NCAA Tournament some 24 years in the making.
It’s a moment that Verdi said he’s been dreaming about for years, and he choked up when reflecting on that afterward.
“God, I hoped for this day, you have no idea,” Verdi said. “I hoped, I prepped, I dreamt of this day for so many years. And now that it’s here – it’s amazing to me. It’s amazing to me… but we got here because of the people that are in our program, and it’s just not our players. It’s my support staff. Everyone is in. Everyone was invested each and every single day. As far as now being here, it’s surreal.”