Women's Basketball | 03/18/20 | 5:44 PM
The Carroll College Fighting Saints women's basketball was scheduled to begin a national tournament voyage this week. As an international pandemic shook the landscape, the dreams of a national championship disappeared. The Saints' season ended a week earlier than expected, and while that disappointment lingers, we take a look back at an otherwise spectacular season by the Saints.
The Saints were not sneaking up on anybody in 2019-20 -- no team from the Frontier Conference was. As October rolled around and fall season began to flirt with the winter season, the Saints were picked to win the Frontier Conference, just months after rival Montana Western won the national tournament.
To say the conference had multiple national contenders would be an understatement. Yet, here the Saints were, back in October, picked the best of the bunch.
Expectations stay high in the PE Center. This nod from fellow coaches showed that even outside the cozy confines of Helena, the program had expectations to do well. Saints juniors
Christine Denny and Dani Wagner were selected as preseason all-conference picks.
This isn't to say there were not bits of uncertainty going into the season. The Saints lost a big piece from its 2018-19 team when All-American
Hannah Dean graduated. And from the coaching ranks, longtime assistant and book of knowledge Gary Turcott stepped aside.
However, a pair of familiar faces, Dean and longtime running mate
Bailey Pasta were bolstering
Rachelle Sayers coaching ranks, building upon the chemistry Sayers and assistant coach J.D. Soloman possessed.
In the offseason, Sayers had drawn a pair of NCAA Division-I transfers to the program: sophomore
Kamden Hilborn, a Montana State transfer, and senior
Emerald Toth, a Boise State transfer. A promising freshmen class also had the Saints excited.
The Saints brought in
Genesis Wilkinson,
Rakiah Grende,
Kirsten Koehnke,
Ally Cleverly,
Erica Nessan and
Kyle Olson. Each freshman had the option to play, knowing minutes would be sparse, or redshirt -- so the majority of the class took the extra season to adjust to college basketball.
The Saints had every reason to feel good entering the 2019-20 season. To add to their Frontier Conference preseason acknowledgement, coaches nationally saw the Saints befitting of the No. 7-rank in the NAIA.
With so much excitement budding, the Saints were ready to roll. Yet a humbling lesson was learned right out of the gate.
Calgary dealt the Saints a 61-45 loss, a game that helped Carroll realize its strength would lie on its speed and depth at guard. To maximize the talent on the roster, the Saints would need to play faster and, sometimes, smaller lineups.
As has been the case under Coach Sayers, the Saints' didn't afford themselves much time to find their game early. Sayers once again loaded the schedule with quality opponents, the type of games that could set back immature rosters.
Nine days after the Calgary game, the Saints would face the traditionally powerful Montana Lady Griz.
Carroll fought the Griz to the end of regulation, forcing an overtime, but once in the final period, the Division-I favorites pulled out the four-point victory in Missoula.
Still, it was a sign of what this squad could do against any team on any night.
And on the other side of the coin, the Saints showed just a few weeks later against Montana State what would happen when they performed below average. The Bobcats took down Carroll 67-33.
It marked a beginning in November that required the Saints to find their bearings. Just a few days later, the Saints would handily defeat Whitworth in Spokane, but then fall in a tight one to Whitman the next day.
The road trip would continue with a hard knock against Corban.
The losses would drop the Saints rank, though never outside of the Top 25. And, just so often as these Saints do, Carroll began climbing its way right back up.
Carroll went on the road and defeated College of Idaho and Eastern Oregon in consecutive nights late in November, signaling the Saints were ready for their Frontier foes in just a few more days.
The Frontier favorite opened up league play in December with a resounding win over Montana Tech in the PE Center, but then fell just a few nights later to a pesky Lewis-Clark State College team.
The foray into Frontier play would be over until January, but the Saints had more high-profile games on the schedule. The Saints went 2-1 in the Phoenix Frontier Classic, a tournament that pits some of the Top 25 teams in the NAIA against each other. The Saints closed the tournament with a 20-point win over Thomas More, another Top 25 team.
Once the conference season started back up and the rest of the college students returned for spring semester, the Saints started rocking the PE Center. The Saints ripped off four consecutive wins in the Frontier to reopen league play.
The Saints kept it cruising, only falling to Montana Western in neck-in-neck games.
The Saints closed out the regular season with two commanding wins over Providence and then Montana State-Northern.
That Senior Night victory, a celebration of
Taylor Salonen and
Emerald Toth. saw the Saints once again climb ladders to snip nets from the goals in the PE Center.
The Saints stumbled in the Frontier postseason tournament, but took solace in the notion of having one last chance at the national tournament to prove themselves.
It was a special season that saw Denny and Wagner shoulder much of the Saints' offense, while
Sienna Swannack,
Jaidyn Lyman and Hilborn had their huge scoring spurts too. Carroll saw its future was in good hands with production from young talent like
Maddie Geritz,
Molly McDermott Wilkinson and Nessan, who all found their spots on the court in different roles. .
Wagner and Denny earned first team all-conference honors, while Swannack became an honorable mention. All three showed they could be All-Americans on any given night.
After the postseason accolades trickled in, the group gathered with friends and supporters to see the unveiling of their seeding at the national tournament a week later. The room exploded when the Saints learned they received a No. 5 seed and were slated to face No. 4-seed Columbia on Thursday, March 19.
However, the country began to feel the pressure of a new pandemic. Sporting associations began to postpone their seasons, highlighted by the NBA pushing for the move. As the NCAA pushed to play games without fans and hope to maintain some of March Madness, all the Saints could do was hope and wait.
It would only be a few more days before the NAIA Tournament was canceled. Many wondered if those Saints would be cutting nets down in Billings, but the cancellation meant the Saints would be a national tournament qualifier and a regular season champion.
A national championship would have to wait.
