Pursuing history: W&J women seek 1st NCAA Tournament win
Stephen Rydzak/W&J Athletics
The seniors on the Washington & Jefferson women’s basketball team have done a lot of good things in their careers, but they have a chance to do something the program has never done – win an NCAA Division III Tournament game.
As Presidents coach Jina DeRubbo put it, winning this weekend would seal the legacy for Bryn Bezjak, Adalynn Cherry and Meghan Dryburgh.
All three were on the last Presidents team that made it in 2022 and helped them earn a place in this year’s tournament with a 59-50 win over Chatham in the PAC championship game Saturday.
W&J plays Messiah in the first round of the NCAA Division III Tournament, 4 p.m. Friday at Ohio Wesleyan.
“After the selection show, we talked about turning the page,” DeRubbo said. “We won a conference championship, which was awesome, but we feel like we’re a team that can win a couple games in the tournament.”
Aside from having an experienced team, part of the optimism for breaking through is a new format the NCAA has used for seeding.
The NCAA used the NPI rankings, a computer system that ranks the teams based on statistics rather than having a committee put together the bracket.
In the past, W&J has drawn future national champions like Transylvania and Hope.
That’s not to paint Messiah as an easy task by any stretch, but the Presidents aren’t in a 1 vs. 16 scenario.
The Presidents have a victory over the NPI’s fourth-ranked team, Baldwin Wallace, which boosted their ranking. It was Baldwin Wallace’s only loss in the regular season.
“This is the first year they’ve done it and it’s all computer generated,” DeRubbo said. “There isn’t a debate about which conference is good, bad or weak. They take the 64 teams in the field and rank them one through 64. At the end of the ranking, we were 40 and Messiah was 22. With Division III there’s some geographic limits, but I think the bracket is a little fairer than it has been in years past.”
Messiah (25-2) enters the D3 tournament on an 18-game winning streak and are led by Mike Miller, who is one of five NCAA Division III coaches to win more than 700 games. He currently has 759 wins in 39 seasons.
His assistant coach, Jodi Noble, has been with him on the bench the entire time. She’s a chemistry professor at Messiah.
Messiah has been the D3 runner-up twice.
DeRubbo coached against Miller twice in the tournament when she was at Bethany.
“He’s legendary,” DeRubbo said. “It was early in my time at Bethany, but we played Messiah in the tournament and lost in overtime and we played them the next year and lost by eight or nine. Back when I started my coaching career I went out and worked at one of his camps. He’s a great coach and great mentor.”
Junior guard Stellanie Loutsion, a Canon-McMillan grad, leads W&J in scoring at 13.3 points per game. Sophomore forward Katie Kovalchick averages 11.4 and Bezjak, Cherry and Dryburgh score around nine each a game. Dryburgh is the all-time leading rebounder in program history.
Loutsion and Dryburgh were first team All-PAC and DeRubbo won Coach of the Year for the fourth straight season.
Riley DeRubbo, the coach’s daughter, has been a nice midseason addition off the bench, scoring 7.6 per game.
Coach DeRubbo expects points to be at a premium in Friday’s matchup, which will feature two experienced teams.
“They have the No. 2 defense in the country,” Coach DeRubbo said. “They’re not a superpower on offense, so I think it’ll be a low-scoring game. I think we can control them on defense, but I’m worried about scoring points. I think we’re pretty evenly matched. If both teams play well it could probably go either way.”