William & Mary never had a basketball team — men’s or women’s — compete in the NCAA Tournament until 2025, and the school has senior guard Bella Nascimento to thank.
The Tribe, which will play against High Point in Thursday’s 9 p.m. ET play-in game, started 7-3 in Coastal Athletic Association play. But once they lost 59-58 in overtime to Drexel on Valentine’s Day, they continued to lose eight of their last nine regular-season games.
Then, William & Mary made an historic run in the conference tournament to become the first team with a losing record to qualify for the NCAA Tournament since Incarnate Word in 2022.
‘We fell on some hard times to finish the regular season,’ head coach Erin Dickerson Davis told USA TODAY Sports. ‘We lost a heartbreaker around the middle of conference play that really just rocked us to our core. We couldn’t find our footing after that.’
As the team got on the bus following a 73-55 loss March 8 at Campbell, Nascimento took matters into her own hands and challenged the team.
‘Is this who we are? Are we quitters? Are we just going to lay down and fold?’ Dickerson Davis recalled Nascimento asking the team. ‘She started calling out herself and all of her teammates on the bus on the way back to William & Mary. She said, ‘This is what I need from you, but we’re not quitters. Don’t quit on me. Don’t lay down.’ I think that sparked the energy that we needed going into practice for the tournament and once we won that first game, we did it together.
‘I think that sparked whatever was going to come next.”
Eight days later, No. 9 seed William & Mary, a team with a losing record (15-18, 8-10), was crowned the unlikely CAA champion against that same Campbell team.
The Tribe fought through No. 1 seed North Carolina A&T in the second round, winning 74-66 in overtime. Then went down 14-0 in the title game before Nascimento posted 20 of the team’s 40 points in a second-half comeback. She finished against Campbell with a career-high 33 points and 11 rebounds while going 14-of-26 from the floor, including 2-of-5 from 3.
‘The emotions that I was filled with,’ Dickerson Davis said. ‘One of the clips that I see over and over is people just giving me a hug and me bursting into tears because this group has been through so many things. We’ve done it together. We’ve been resilient. We fell down seven times and we got back up the eighth time.’
Dickerson Davis’ team will need that resilience as it heads into Thursday night’s First Four matchup against High Point (21-11, 13-3 in Big South), which ESPNU will broadcast.
The Panthers are on a nine-game winning streak and secured their second-ever NCAA Tournament bid by being the best of the Big South Conference.
Upsets are rare in women’s March Madness games — teams seeded Nos. 14-16 are a combined 1-360 in tournament history, according to NCAA.com — and William & Mary drew a tough path.
Even with the pressures of the school’s first NCAA Tournament appearance, Dickerson Davis said she’s relying on the same message that got her team through the conference tournament: Take it one game at a time.
‘That is the same mindset that we have going into this game versus a very good, well-coached High Point team,” Dickerson Davis said. ‘We have another game and you have to treat it as the last one you’re going to get. What do you want that to look like and how do you want it to go? Make sure you leave everything out on the floor and more than anything, remember that you cannot do it alone.”
Heading into this year’s tournament, the winners of the First Four games are 1-11 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Only one lower seed won a first-round matchup last year, when No. 11 seed Middle Tennessee beat No. 6 Louisville.
If the Tribe wins against the Panthers, it’ll face a tough No. 1 seed Texas on Saturday.
In 1998, Harvard became the only No. 16 seed to ever beat a No. 1 seed. So while history isn’t on William & Mary’s side, it’s not impossible. And this team has been doing the improbable all year.
