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| Trine athletics file photo |
By Riley Zayas
Special to D3sports.com
When the Trine women’s basketball team took the floor for last Saturday’s second-round matchup against host Loras, the Thunder did so in front of a crowd largely there in support of the Duhawks. For all intents and purposes, it was a postseason home game for Loras, and treated that way by a small, yet vocal crowd at Lillis Court.
But it did not bother Trine much. The Thunder, who traveled 344 miles from Angola, Indiana, through Illinois, and into Iowa, were not expecting anything different. They were there to clinch a spot in the Sweet 16, and a regular season schedule that featured road games against five opponents receiving Top 25 votes had prepared them well.
“We told our team to embrace the challenge and embrace the atmosphere,” Trine head coach Andy Rang said four days after his team defeated Loras, 60-54. “The crowd from Loras was fantastic and made it a wonderful college basketball environment. But I feel like our team has been through those environments before.”
Indeed they have. The Thunder became the first team to hand Hope a loss since the Flying Dutch won the 2022 national title when they emerged with a 76-64 victory on Dec. 17 at Hope in one of D-III basketball’s toughest atmospheres for a road team. That came in addition to playing in front of a vocal Baldwin Wallace crowd in a Nov. 11 loss, and winning against Wartburg on a neutral court in St. Petersburg, Florida, five days before Christmas.
Not to mention the fact that most of the current team witnessed first-hand Trine’s defeat of Transylvania on its home court that advanced the Thunder to the Final Four a season ago.
“As a team, I think we all agree that we like traveling,” sophomore guard Sidney Wagner told D3hoops.com. “Traveling isn’t something that scares us. Not saying that six hours on a bus is fun, but we enjoy being on the bus together. It’s made our team chemistry pretty strong and we know how to hold our own when we get there.”
Trine demonstrated that this past weekend, getting past a nationally ranked WashU team in the opening round, 79-69, before turning around and beating Loras. They will be on the bus yet again this week, taking the 308-mile trip to Lexington, Kentucky, for a second straight sectional at Transylvania.
“We try to schedule tough,” Rang noted. “And I think that’s what builds character in your team, when you have to go into those tough atmospheres. One stretch in December, we went to Hope, got on a plane the next day, went to St. Petersburg and played North Park and Wartburg. Then we had to turn around and play Eau Claire at a tournament at DePauw.
“Those games, and the travel, and all the stuff we did early in the year has prepared us for this.”
Playing in challenging road environments has not been the only hurdle thrown in Trine’s path to a deep NCAA Tournament run. The injury bug struck at multiple points during the year, coming on top of the six seniors who departed following last season, having left a large hole to fill.
By late December, the Thunder two more holes in the rotation; junior guard Chelsi Giesige tore her ACL in the first scrimmage of the year, and Sam Underhill – the go-to in the post who scored in double figures in eight of her 13 games played – went down with an ACL injury of her own in the 75-68 loss at UW-Eau Claire on Dec. 29.
“When Sam went out, it was definitely heartbreaking for all of us,” Wagner said. “She was an all-around great player, and it was going to be a big spot to fill. I don’t think that it was a one-person spot to fill. Everyone on the team had to step up in a way.”
That included Wagner, a sophomore who averaged 4.0 points per game in 32 contests a year ago, and found her way into the starting lineup just a handful of games before Underhill went out. Wagner’s first start of the year came at Hope, and she delivered in a monumental way, coming through with 29 points in the 12-point victory.
She started every game since, and while the native of Warsaw, Indiana is a guard, not a forward like Underhill, Wagner stepped in as Trine’s go-to scorer. Entering Friday’s matchup against NYU, she is averaging 14.9 points per game, which led to MIAA Player of the Year honors two weeks ago. And along with Makayla Ardis, who has made her presence known at 12.5 points per contest, a near-unstoppable backcourt duo is leading Trine.
“Once the bullheaded coach in me figured out that [Wagner and Ardis] could play together, that helped us out a little bit,” Rang said with a laugh.
“We work well together,” Wagner added, when asked about the scoring duo she and Ardis have formed for the Thunder. “We’re pretty fast when we play together. I put in a lot of work over the summer, and I knew, with all the seniors leaving, I was going to have to fill some big shoes. Starting didn’t really matter to me at first. I just wanted to win as a team.”
That approach, Rang said, has been found in virtually every nationally-recognized player to come through Trine’s program in recent years, including all-americans Brandi Dawson and Tara Bieniewicz. It goes back to the type of kids recruited to the university of just over 2,500 students in the northeast corner of Indiana.
“Each one of those kids didn’t care whether they scored 50 a game or 10 a game,” Rang commented. “They just wanted to win. Sydney is in that same boat. I think that is what makes our program special. Nobody cares too much about the individual awards.”
She credits and thanks her teammates when mention of the MIAA Player of the Year honor is brought up, noting that the team itself enables anyone to have a career night every time Trine steps onto the court.
“I wouldn’t be where I am without them,” Wagner said. “The whole team makes it easy for me. The team makes it easy for anyone to shine.”
Now Wagner is leading the charge into the second weekend, and figures to play a significantly larger role this time around in Lexington than she did a year ago, where she saw just seven minutes of action in two wins.
While Trine made a Final Four run in 2022, falling to an MIAA rival in Hope in the national semifinals, and was highly ranked in the D3hoops.com Top 25 poll for much of the year, the Thunder have an underdog mentality. They are playing with nothing to lose in a stacked sectional and just two wins away from a second straight Final Four.
“We’ve taken this tournament – I know this is hard to say with the success we’ve had – as the underdog,” Rang said. “Transylvania is undefeated and playing really well. New York has been ahead of us the whole time. ONU has had a wonderful year. We’re going to have to do what we do every day; defend and rebound, and hope we make some shots along the way.”
Riley Zayas is co-founder of the website True to the Cru, which covers Mary Hardin-Baylor athletics.