Bates seniors will play an integral part in the success of this coming season. From left to right: Nina Davenport, Lexie Nason, Ashley Kulesza, Lyse Henshaw, and Emily Freedland. (Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal)
LEWISTON — Coach Alison Montgomery hopes the 2017-18 season will be a pivotal one for the Bates College women’s basketball program.
The Bobcats are overhauling their paying style and aiming to do likewise with their culture.
“Just having that mentality and expecting to compete in every game,” Montgomery said. “And I do think of this as hopefully an important, pivotal year in that way.”
The Bobcats will try to earn the program’s first winning season since 2010-11. But more than that, they want to shift the culture and become more prominent forces in the NESCAC, and not just this year, but in the future as well.
Montgomery is counting on a large senior class to help set the tone for the future. The Bobcats have five seniors this year: Nina Davenport, Lexie Nason, Emily Freeland, Lyse Henshaw and Ashley Kulesza.
“As coach has said, we have such a pivotal year for our program,” Nason, the team’s captain, said. “So (we’re) just really valuing what it means to be a senior this year, especially with a young freshman class, just being able to shift our program in that right direction.”
Davenport said players in the Class of 2018 has always had at least a bit of a leadership role because there has been so many of them. This year, that role increases; because they are seniors, obviously, but also because this year’s squad has six freshmen. (In between are one junior and two sophomores).
The seniors will be counted on to guide the freshmen through what can be a brutal NESCAC schedule. There’s reigning national champion Amherst, as well as Tufts, which finished last season ranked second nationally, and Bowdoin, which was No. 23.
But, coming off an 8-16 (3-7 in NESCAC) season, the Bobcats are looking to make a jump of the standings and go into every game with confidence they can compete.
Davenport said the latter hasn’t always been the case since she arrived at Bates.
“One thing Coach Montgomery’s been really trying to implement since she started here was having really positive energy,” Davenport said. “So it’s just her trying to change our attitude so we approach games, practices, the season in general with a more positive outlook.”
The freshmen, Montgomery says, are ready to go. But when the season becomes a grind and human nature kicks in — when practices become redundant, adversity appears, a matchup with a powerhouse looms — it will be up to the seniors to help the Bobcats endure it.
“Just our culture, we’re trying to make this jump and a shift to being a winning team,” Montgomery said. “And I think that takes some time and that is a bridge that we’re hoping to cross this year, just approaching every game like we expect to compete. And so that will be really important that that comes from our senior leaders, that sort of expectation. Because I think we have some nice, youthful energy that don’t know any different, they’re just playing hard.”
For what it’s worth, Nason and Davenport both say the freshmen — one of which is former Gray-New Gloucester standout Skye Conley — are already fitting in nicely.
We were joking after the first few days of practice, like, ‘Oh, we didn’t even know they were freshmen,’” Nason said. “They’ve really picked up quickly and have adjusted to the college level of play.
“They don’t act like freshmen, they don’t play like freshmen.”
Faster ’Cats
The seniors also will be catalysts in helping the Bobcats transition to an uptempo style on both ends of the court.
The offense will push the ball up court quickly, the ball handlers will try to penetrate deeply early in the shot clock. The defense will switch from a half-court man-to-man philosophy to a mixture that will include full-court pressure and different zone looks.
Montgomery said the tempo change helps the Bobcats utilize their strengths while also masking their lack of height. All but one player, Kulesza, are less than 6 feet tall, so there could be a lot of instances where the Bobcats have four guards on the court at the same time.
Playing uptempo isn’t as simple as deciding to go faster. It has to become a habit, Montgomery said, to the point that players can do it effectively, and avoid sloppiness, for an entire game.
“I think it demands a lot of physical toughness,” Montgomery said. “Forcing them to push through physical fatigue, to just run, run, run, I think is a big thing.
“And then to also balance that with some mental toughness in terms of, like, I’m still going to ask them to be disciplined and make good decisions.”
The new uptempo style is more than a new approach. It’s also symbolic of the change Montgomery wants to see in the program.
“I think that’s another reason I want to build our team around playing uptempo and playing with that energy, like pushing the ball and picking up full-court and hoping that will sort of spark us even more to have that high energy and willingness to compete every second they’re on the court,” she said.
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