In multiple post-game press conferences this season, GW women’s basketball coach Joe McKeown has said he always tries to think positively. And even after the Colonials’ 63-59 loss to Xavier in Sunday’s Atlantic 10 semifinal, McKeown and senior guard Kim Beck said the same thing: GW must move on and look forward to the NCAA tournament.
No. 19/16 (AP, ESPN/USA Today) GW will find out what its seed is, who its opponent is and where it is headed for the first round of the tournament on March 17, but in one of the most unpredictable postseasons in all of sports, moving on might be easier said than done.
The Colonials bowed out of the A-10 Championship without a title for the fourth consecutive year, leaving the current senior class with an empty space in its nearly filled trophy case. But McKeown said his team is excited about the prospect of getting back on the court.
“We can’t wait to get to next week,” he said. “We took some time off from practice to let the players try to get healthy and catch up academically. We’ll see what happens (on selection Monday).”
Last season, the Colonials finished 28-2 overall with a 14-0 conference record in the regular season and fell in the A-10 semifinal to Saint Joseph’s. GW received a No. 5 seed in the NCAA tournament and went on to defeat Boise State and Texas A&M before losing to top-seeded North Carolina in the Sweet 16.
This year, GW enters the tournament with a 25-6 record and 12-2 conference mark. With so many conferences in the midst of hosting their postseason tournaments, McKeown said he could not guess where the Colonials might be seeded.
“I think in the Big 12, there are four teams that could end up anywhere (between a No. 2 and No. 6 seed),” McKeown said. “They’re all kinda bunched in around where we are as far as being in the top 20. I think that league is gonna have a little bit of an effect on some things that might happen with us.”
As he often does, McKeown cited seniors Beck, Sarah-Jo Lawrence and Whitney Allen as a big reason the Colonials could do damage in the coming weeks. Rather than cower under the pressure of a national tournament, McKeown said the seniors, in the past, have risen to the occasion.
“It’s a chance to really make a name for yourself as a player and as a program,” he said. “When you have seniors who’ve had great NCAA tournament performances, I think it’s a team thing for them. It’s ‘Wow, let’s go prove ourselves,’ rather than the pressure of saying, ‘we can’t afford to play bad in this game.'”
The history books support McKeown’s point. In the last three years in the NCAA tournament, the Colonials have beaten the SEC’s University of Mississippi, Old Dominion University on its home court and Big 12 champion Texas A&M University, to name a few. Their only losses have come to perennial powerhouses the University of Tennessee and the University of North Carolina (twice). The game against the Lady Vols was close for most of the game until Tennessee’s experience took over late in the contest.
To be successful this year though, McKeown said there is one key to GW finding victory against the top programs: putting the ball in the basket.
He said, “We defend pretty well usually, but to beat (a team like Tennessee or North Carolina) you’ve got to score the basketball. That, to me, is the biggest factor.”
