By Jim Stout
D3hoops.com
QUINCY, Mass. -- James Stutzman didn't know a lot about the Commonwealth Coast Conference or the lack of respect it commanded when he arrived at Eastern Nazarene from Western Michigan three years ago.
It did not take him long, however, to catch on.
"Right from my first day here, the ladies told me that no one respected us or the conference," said Stutzman.
"Obviously we were a little more concerned with our own program than the rest of the CCC, but I realized that no one we were involved with was thought of very highly. So we sat down and developed a game plan as to how we wanted to go about changing that."
Three years later, the plan has come to fruition. Not only is the Eastern Nazarene women's team the school's first to qualify for the NCAA tournament, the Crusaders have reached Friday's Atlantic sectional semifinals at Rowan. All three games of the sectional will be broadcast live on D3hoopsNet.
Though Colby-Sawyer was the first CCC women's team to win a NCAA game last season, the Chargers beat Hunter College of the CUNYAC. That was not a major step forward, though it was certainly a landmark.
Eastern Nazarene, however, earned its trip to Glassboro by stunning NJAC member Richard Stockton, 66-63, last Saturday before a crowd of 1,200 at the Lahue Physical Education Center in a second-round game. It was the biggest basketball win for the CCC since Anna Maria stunned Salem State in the 1996 men's tournament.
After Anna Maria beat Salem, the CCC men's champ went that season to -- you guessed it -- Rowan to play in the Atlantic sectionals, eventually losing to Stockton in a Round of 16 game.
The Eastern Nazarene women (26-2) will meet host Rowan (23-3) in the first game of Friday's 5:30 p.m. doubleheader at Esby Gym. Southern Maine, never a stranger to the tournament at this late stage, plays Clark in the second game, creating a New England championship game of sorts. Why a New England championship is being played in south Jersey is anyone's guess.
Eastern Nazarene would like to be playing at home, too, where it drew 1,600 for its Commonwealth Coast title-game win against Colby-Sawyer two weeks ago. So going to Glassboro is one more reminder of how basketball people still do not look favorably on the CCC. The conference's is part of the NCAA's wide-ranging Atlantic Region, not the Northeast.
That's one more incentive Eastern Nazarene will have on its side this week as it rolls six hours by bus down Route 95, from the New England Thruway into the Jersey Turnpike and through the Garden State.
"We still expect to get quite a bit of support on the road," said Stutzman. "The school has been very supportive of myself and of the program since I arrived, and they've canceled classes on Friday so the students can attend the game. They're chartered a spectator bus to go down. The support will still be pretty strong."
It's not as though ENC has to be intimidated by the Rowan mystique, either. Rowan, despite returning most of its players from last season's Sweet Sixteen team, lost to Stockton in the first round of the NJAC playoffs.
That could have been a wake-up call for the Profs, though. They then went on to knock off Salisbury State by 87-73 in the first round of the NCAAs. They also demolished CCC members Curry and Wentworth during a New Year's Holiday swing through Boston.
One of the keys to Eastern Nazarene's growth has been the same key that's allowed NESCAC schools to flourish on a national level -- national recruiting. While six of Stutzman's 10 players are from New England, two are from Ohio, one is from Miami and another, starting forward Young Cobb, is from Simon Sanchez, Guam.
Stutzman himself is an Ohio native, having been a high school teacher there before getting into college coaching at NAIA member Goshen. He later went to Western Michigan to complete his master's and to work as a graduate assistant coach with the Broncos.
Since moving to Eastern Nazarene for the 1997-98 season, Stutzman has drawn upon his Ohio ties, recruiting sophomore shooting guard Nicole Braddock and freshman reserve forward Carissa Hatcher, both of Mount Vernon. The other starters are junior point guard Jody Gardner of Braintree, Mass., freshman Kristy Smith of Wolfeboro, N.H., and senior Melissa Christmas of Miami.
It is not a bad strategy for a Church of Nazarene institution to have a player named Christmas (11.0 ppg, 9.7 rpg) on its women's basketball team. Gardner and Smith average 14 points a game for Eastern Nazarene. The Crusaders only two losses this season have been to CCC rival Salve Regina and to Little East runnerup Plymouth State. They have won 25 of their last 26 games.
"We're still definitely a Cinderella team," said Stutzman.
"We're a small school (850 students) and we're a small team on the court. We basically run a four-guard offense and we don't blow anyone out. But there's a quiet confidence about our team. When we fell behind Stockton in the second half last Saturday, I called a time out to settle everyone down, but I could see no one was rattled. We're the underdogs going to Rowan, but I feel we'll represent the school and the conference well."
