Ally Landau leads Smith in most major statistical categories, including blocks and rebounds. Photo by Steve LaBonte, d3photography.com

By Gordon Mann
D3sports.com

Shortly after the Bowdoin College women’s basketball season ended with a loss on the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament for the second season in a row, Polar Bears head coach Megan Phelps reflected on her team’s success.

“It’s easy to take it for granted,” said Phelps. “It’s [hard] to come back this year, knowing that we got as close as we could have to our goal of making it to a final four [last year]…Knowing what it feels like to have missed it by this much, and to come back and do it again anyway is incredibly courageous.”

• NYU: Pellecchia rolling with the defense
• UW-Stout: Glad she's on my team
• 2025 D3hoops.com All-Region teams
• Jostens Trophy fan voting
• More NCAA Tournament features

No one knows that better than Smith College, which ended Bowdoin’s last two NCAA Tournament runs.

Last weekend, the Pioneers knocked off previously unbeaten Bowdoin in front of a sold-out crowd in the Sweet 16, and then they defeated Gustavus Adolphus, 61-50, in the Elite 8 and punched their ticket to a third consecutive national semifinal.

The Pioneers have made the last six NCAA Tournaments, with each postseason run lasting longer than the one before.

It started in 2019 when Smith reached the postseason as an at-large selection, beat Merchant Marine in the first round, and then lost to Bowdoin in the second. The next season, the Pioneers reached the tournament’s second weekend by beating SUNY New Paltz, 62-60, before COVID-19 wiped out the remainder of 2020 postseason and all of 2021.

In 2022, the Pioneers returned to the NCAA Tournament, won two games handily at home on the first weekend, and then traveled to Wisconsin where they lost in heartbreaking fashion to host UW-Whitewater, 78-76 in overtime.

Instead of that shattering the Pioneers, they came back stronger in 2023 and reached the Final Four behind national Player of the Year Morgan Morrison, before falling to eventual national champion Transylvania in the national semifinals.

Morrison left Smith to use her fifth year of eligibility while doing graduate studies at New York University, and the Pioneers forged on. Smith once again reached the national semifinals in 2024 and this time went a step farther by beating Wartburg, 61-54 in overtime, setting up a national championship matchup with NYU and Morrison.

Smith ended last season with a 51-41 loss to NYU in the national championship game, and it looked like Smith’s run of national prominence might also be finished. The Pioneers graduated three starters including first-team All-American Jessie Ruffner and lost 60 percent of their scoring, 53 percent of their rebounding and 52 percent of their assists – statistics Coach Hersey readily ticked off after Saturday’s win over Gustavus Adolphus.

Once again, the Pioneers have retooled and reached the final weekend of the Division III basketball season. In that win vs. Gustavus, Smith got big performances from senior guard Jane Loo and senior forward Jazmyn Washington, who have been on all three of Smith’s Final Four teams.

Loo and Washington combined for 21 points, and Washington was particularly good on defense where she matched up with Gustavus’ all-conference forward Rachel Kawiecki and held her to six points in the final three periods of the Pioneers’ 61-50 win.

In one key stretch, Kawiecki hit a fadeaway jumper that pulled Gustavus within one point at 39-38 midway through the third quarter. The Pioneers immediately went to Washington, who drove to hole for a layup and drew Kawiecki’s third personal foul. Washington scored six of her 11 points in that period and Smith gradually tightened its grasp on another March victory.

Hersey describes Washington as “a point guard around the rim” because Smith can run its offense through her when she operates back-to-the-basket against one-on-one coverage. “She shifts [defensive] rotations, she gets players to bite, she gets our guards good looks from a different point of attack on the court. ... She creates a lot of offense for us that isn’t always her putting the ball in the hoop. It’s her ability to shift defenses and allow us to create better looking shots for our guards.”

Washington and Loo are hallmarks of Smith’s success. Despite their lack of size (Washington is 5-9 and Loo 5-7), they play fearlessly and use their quickness, angles, and basketball IQ to find shots that look like they should not be there. Loo scored 12 against Bowdoin, including a crushing three-pointer midway through the fourth quarter that put the Pioneers up eight, and then scored 10 more against Gustavus.

Smith’s other star in Saturday night’s victory is another component in the program’s success.

Ally Landau played three years at Haverford where she had a lot of individual accolades, but the highest level of team success eluded her. She was all-conference multiple times and twice an all-region honoree. But the Fords lost to Johns Hopkins in the conference playoffs her first two seasons and then missed the postseason entirely last year.

After finishing her undergraduate degree, Landau decided she wanted to play one more season and reached out to the coaches who recruited her out of high school. Hersey, who was on that list, brought Landau to Smith’s campus, and that visit plus the college’s teaching program convinced Landau that Smith was the right place for her.

On Saturday, Landau sent the Pioneers into the half with a 30-29 lead over Gustavus Adolphus by reading the Gusties’ offense, jumping a passing lane along the perimeter for a steal, and then streaking down the court for a layup, dodging a defender along the way.

Landau finished the game with 22 points, half of them in the fourth quarter in which Smith held Gustavus to six points on 3-for-13 shooting. On the season, Landau leads the Pioneers in points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks and minutes, and now she’s leading them into the national semifinals.

“This is an unmatched feeling. Ever since I came here, this is what I was looking for – getting to the Final Four and being able to live through these moments.”

Hersey has taken what initially felt like a cool one-year story and turned Smith into a national mainstay by developing her young players and integrating the right transfers into the program. Last season, Smith incorporated Tufts transfer Sofia Rosa into a roster that reached the national semifinals the prior year. Rosa fit in perfectly as a forward last season and is now one of Hersey’s assistant coaches.

When asked about the secret to successfully integrating transfers into her program, Hersey says, “Each year, it’s like figuring out a puzzle, right? It’s like figuring out how you’re going to maximize your team. You’ve got to figure that out, and then you need to get everyone to buy into that.”

“Every coach is trying to do that. The experience of being in the NCAA Tournament has been really helpful for me. We take our preparation [for these games] really seriously, but we learn a lot while we’re doing it. It’s sort of an opportunity for us to grow as a coaching staff and really dive into an elite coach’s mind…that experience has pushed me personally to grow myself as a strategist, and that’s a fun part of the game for me.”

Hersey’s next study session will be repeat because the Pioneers have a rematch on Thursday with UW-Oshkosh, the team that Smith beat in the Sweet 16 at Bowdoin’s sectional. The Titans are making their first Final Four trip since 1996 while conference mates UW-Stout make their first trip ever. Even defending national champions New York University, with its 60-game winning streak, has not been to the national semifinals three consecutive times.

The Pioneers do not shy away from expectations for March excellence, nor do they spout cliches about putting the past behind them. Each Smith postseason run fuels the one that follows, with the elation and disappointment that characterizes the NCAA Tournament turning into the guidepost for next season’s goals.

“A lot of it is our mindset,” she explains. “It’s from Day 1 – understanding what the goals are. We’re not going to not talk about the national championship. We talk about it all the time because I’m a big believer that you have to live in the goals, you have to live in the dream, you have to live in that space in order for it to be a reality for your team.”

“I think this is a very battle-tested program who has been there, who understand the routine of it, and I like our chances due to the experience that we have. We have players on our team who’ve only been to a Final Four. They don’t know anything else. That’s sort of like a hidden superpower that we’re going to have to really maximize to do what we want to do down there.”

When asked about past NCAA Tournament losses, Washington also meets the topic head-on.

“The biggest thing is we don’t ever really put it behind us. It’s kind of the fuel that gets us going through that offseason, through those grinds where it’s just practice before the games. We’ve always just been hungry for something more, we want that next step, and that’s what pushed us.”

With two more wins this coming weekend, the Pioneers can take that final step and finish as national champions.