All the wins — 95 total now and 42 in a row — certainly have been fun for Mallory Gerber and her eight senior teammates on the Hope College women's basketball team.
They're just a drop in the basket, though.
"Hope has meant the world to me. It's honestly another place that I can call home," Gerber said after the No. 1-ranked Flying Dutch's 101-37 Senior Day victory against Kalamazoo College on Saturday at DeVos Fieldhouse.
"I have built so many great relationships here, and it goes beyond basketball and winning games. It goes with having those relationships that I'm going to have for the rest of my life."
Gerber and her teammates wrapped up the regular season with its second consecutive perfect run through MIAA regular-season play.
Against Kalamazoo, the Flying Dutch (13-0 overall) opened the game by scoring nine of the first 11 points and never surrendering the lead after that.
Hope reached the century mark for the third time this season and the 28th time in its history.
Seventeen different players scored. Senior guard Lauren Newman (Flushing, Michigan/Flushing HS) topped the Flying Dutch with 13 points. Senior forward Courteney Barnes (Mokena, Illinois/Lincoln Way-Central) grabbed a career-high 13 rebounds.
The Flying Dutch set a DeVos Fieldhouse record with a plus-36 rebounding margin, passing the old mark by two.
Prior to the game, Hope honored its seniors with a traditional pre-game ceremony.
Together, they've helped the Flying Dutch put together a 95-7 overall record, including a 52-3 mark in MIAA regular-season games and at 29-0 during the 2019-season, the lone unbeaten season in NCAA Division III that year. They have not gotten a chance to claim a national title twice of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Head coach Brian Morehouse wanted to do something more to salute his special and unusually large senior class.
Rather than pick which five seniors would start, he put them all out on the court together for the opening tipoff. The decision would draw a technical foul and give Kalamazoo two free-throw attempts, but it was a price he was willing to pay.
VIDEO: Watch a replay of the seniors on the court for tipoff
"It was the best technical and the best 2-0 deficit I have ever had in my coaching career," Morehouse said. "I was thinking about Senior Day a couple of weeks ago, and I thought how am I going to do this? Do I start the people who normally don't start? Do I just start my normal group of seniors? Then I thought, I wonder what the rule is if I put everybody out there? What would that be?
"Our league director of officiating talked me through it, and I said, 'I will take a technical to start nine players because it's just the right thing to do."
Hope now turns its attention to the MIAA Tournament that begins on Monday, March 1. The tournament field is to be announced on Sunday.