Championship Game Sunday at Noon

Pronounced E-vah.

No way it was 1705. Maybe the fact that the students were so late arriving that some of them weren’t factored in.

NCAA win*

Yikes, where did this come from. You want to chide someone for underestimating the team, that's fine. But this poster has always been a huge booster for improving our women's teams. He want us to keep pushing. Good day to be happy.

Bucknell for the 2007 men’s final?

Just as we held Thieren to 6 FGA in the semis, the most telling stats today were for Weimar, 7 FGA( 2 FG) , 4 FTA, ( 3FT) and 5 turnovers in 40 minutes.
Congrats especially to our bigs, and also the rest of the team which rotated effectively when we doubled, or tripled Weimar.

Bucknell brought their cheerleaders, not certain about their band.  The whole section behind the Bison bench was orange.  

T&G take.

'This is probably the best feeling in the world,' Power-Cassidy earns MVP honors as Holy Cross clinches berth in NCAA Tournament
Jennifer Toland
Worcester Telegram & Gazette


WORCESTER — Holy Cross senior Bronagh Power-Cassidy, HC’s pride of Dublin, Ireland, could not have imagined a better way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

On Sunday, in her final home game at a packed Hart Center, Power-Cassidy scored a game-high 20 points to lead the top-seeded Crusaders to a 61-55 win over No. 3 seed Boston University and their second straight Patriot League Tournament championship.

Power-Cassidy, draped in Ireland’s flag as she reveled with her teammates and they raised the trophy, was the tourney MVP.

“This is just like a dream come true,” Power-Cassidy said. “Luck of the Irish is one thing, but I don’t think anything about this win was luck. We all worked so hard all season, and for everything to click today, I wouldn’t have wanted to be here with any other group, whether it was St. Patrick’s Day or any other day, but to do it today, at the Hart Center, our home, this is probably the best feeling in the world.”

Holy Cross (20-12), which earned the Patriot League’s automatic NCAA Tournament bid, will face the University of Tennessee at Martin in a play-in game in Iowa on Thursday at a time to be determined. If the Crusaders win, they will meet Iowa and Caitlin Clark, who became the NCAA's all-time leading scorer this year.

The PL tourney championship was the 13th overall for Holy Cross. HC, which beat BU in the final for the second consecutive year, became the first PL team to win back-to-back tournament titles since Navy won three straight from 2011-13.

“(After winning it last year) we said, ‘Let’s do it again,’” Holy Cross senior Janelle Allen said. “We’re a very tight senior class and a very good senior class. We have confidence in ourselves. We put in the work to be here. I wouldn’t want to be seniors with anyone else.”

Fans, dressed in purple for HC, red for BU and green for St. Patrick’s Day, filled the bleachers and rocked the Hart Center.

“The atmosphere was electric,” Holy Cross coach Maureen Magarity said. “It took my breath away a few times just looking around.”

With 15 wins at the Hart Center this year, the Crusaders set a single-season program record.

Against the Terriers, HC played outstanding defense and held PL Player of the Year Caitlin Weimar to five points on 2-for-7 shooting.
Holy Cross' Kaitlyn Flanagan looks to put up a shot.

“She’s a heck of a player,” Magarity said. “It’s not so much stopping her; it’s limiting her touches, and I thought we did fabulous job of pushing her off the block and not allowing her to just catch and seal deep and go up. Our team defense was great. We clogged the paint, stayed off the shooters, our doubles were fantastic and our rotations were great.”

BU, which finished 20-12, beat Holy Cross, 66-63, late in the regular season in Boston. HC surrendered a big first-half lead.

The teams played a memorable PL final last year at BU’s Case Gym. Holy Cross built a huge lead, and held off a furious Terriers’ rally to take a 66-61 victory.

Holy Cross never trailed Sunday, and the Crusaders led by as many as 17 early in the third quarter.

“We were trying not to compare today to last year,” Magarity said, “but we kept saying, ‘We have go continue to play like we’re down. Don’t look at the score.’ A 10-point lead didn’t feel like a 10-point lead in a game like today. We knew they were going to make their runs and not give it to us. We had to go take it.”

The Terriers, behind junior guard Alex Giannaros, did make their move, and cut HC’s lead to six with just under 8 minutes left.

Like she did throughout the tournament, HC senior guard Cara McCormack hit a pair of timely, back-to-back baskets, a 3 from the corner and a layup, to push the Crusaders’ lead back to double digits.

“My teammates always believe in me and my coaches always believe in me,” said McCormack, who finished with 15 points. “It’s easy to be confident when everybody believes in you.”

It was a seven-point game after a pair of free throws from Weimar, but HC sophomore Kaitlyn Flanagan and junior Lindsay Berger made clutch foul shots to help hold off the Terriers.

“What a game,” Magarity said. “We had some tough ones with BU, and we knew it was going to come down to the wire. I’m so proud of our defensive effort. We were so locked into what we were doing, and it translated into our offense.

“It’s really, really hard to win at our level,” said Magarity, who has guided the Crusaders to two regular-season PL titles and two PL tourney championships in her four years. “I’m so grateful to continue to play with this group. To make it to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments as a coach is a dream come true, and to do it with these girls just means the world to me.”