By Charlie Lynn, News Editor
During one practice towards the end of last season, Haverford Women’s Basketball coach Bobbi Morgan decided to switch up the team’s usual high-low offense and took off Samantha Wetzel ‘18 and Sierra Berkel ‘18. It was a surprising decision, as Morgan built her offense around these two players that she describes as two of the best in all her eleven seasons at Haverford. Last season, they led Haverford to a 21-7 record and a NCAA tournament berth.
In their place, Morgan brought in Megan Furch ‘20 and Anna-Sophia Capizzi ‘20. This season’s co-captain Katie Cook ‘19 explained that suddenly, “the five of us on the court are not as big, not as strong, but faster. And we cut better.”
This brief experiment late last season with the cutting-heavy Princeton-style offensive scheme was the preview of the style that would define their 2018-2019 season that includes a Centennial Conference championship and a trip to the second round of the NCAA tournament.
During that fateful practice last season, Cook ‘19 said, “I turned to [Morgan] and said, ‘This is not going to work.’ And she goes, ‘I know, but this is going to work next year.’ It’s so weird just throwing that in there and then the first day of practice [this season] it’s a Princeton set, and that’s been our offense for the entire year. It’s been very successful.”
In their impressive run to the second round of the NCAA tournament this winter, the Fords finished conference play with a 15-5 record, including a win over #20 Gettysburg at home by 21 points. In the Centennial Conference Tournament, the team avenged two regular season losses to Johns Hopkins by beating them in a close Centennial Conference semifinal, and went out the next day to beat Gettysburg again for a second Centennial Conference title in six years.
Their conference title propelled them into a fast start in the NCAA tournament, where they eased past Rosemont College 80-37 in the first round. However, they suffered a tough loss by just six points to #4 Tufts, ending what initially began as a season of transition for the Fords.
Before the season began, Morgan herself knew full well that with the graduation of Berkel and Wetzel, the Fords would have to change their offense. Berkel and Wetzel were two of the most dominate post players in the Centennial Conference. They both ended their careers with over 1,000 points. Her new team would be smaller and the focus of their offense would have to switch to guards. She explains that coming into this season that “there were some big question marks.”
After the Fords lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament in 2018 to Christopher Newport University, Morgan spent the summer making sure she had the right style for her new-look team. Morgan’s skills as coach are evidenced by the fact that prior to her arrival at Haverford in 2008, the Fords had only one winning season since the program began in 1980.
She explained, “I spent last summer going through my tool box. Looking at things I have used in the past with smaller teams.” She also spent time with the coaching staff of Division II University of the Sciences who have used a Printcon-style offense more frequently in the past.
Morgan continued, “We completely changed the way we play in terms of our offensive style in order to play to our strength, which is guard-oriented. And lots of shooters and drivers.”
Their new style was a significant departure from the previous seasons where the majority of the team’s points and rebounds came from Berkel and Wetzel. Now, the scoring would have to be more evenly distributed.
“It’s been fun,” she continued, “because every game we don’t know who will be our leading scorer. A lot of games it’s someone different.”
It also made the Fords more difficult to defend against, as teams could no longer double-team the graduated Berkel as they had done in the past. Haverford’s offense in the past had become so familiar to some of their Centennial Conference rivals that, according to Cook, they even knew the names of the Fords’s sets.
Speaking to The Bi-College News prior to the team’s run to the Centennial Conference championship and the NCAA tournament, Morgan made clear that she wasn’t all that surprised by the team’s success, but she knew there was a chance it wouldn’t work out.
“It was new to everybody. It’s kind of a risk. It’s not something I usually do. But I knew we had to do it.”
Another one of the challenges the Fords faced was the addition of two new starters to a team that had seen little change to the personnel over the last four years. Berkel ’18, Wetzel ‘18, Cook ‘19, and fellow co-captain Macy Goldbach ‘19 had all been starters since the 2015-2016 season. This season Goldbach and Cook returned alongside Maddie Gallic ‘20. Capizzi ‘20 and Furch ‘20 stepped up to starting roles.
In addition to their successes against Division III schools, the Fords got the chance to play Division I University of Pennsylvania for the first time. It came at the end of a busy week for the Fords, as they played five games over nine days. Over that stretch, the Fords beat Franklin & Marshall away, beat Washington College at home, beat Swarthmore away, and then had their big victory at Gettysburg. The next day, they played Division I UPenn.
The opportunity came about through Morgan’s friendship with UPenn coach Mike McLaughlin, who once competed with Morgan for recruits when she was head coach at Cabrini University and McLaughlin was at Holy Family University.
Morgan explained that, “He [McLaughlin] had this date. And I looked at our schedule and we were going to play Penn as the fifth game of the week. But I also knew it was a great opportunity.”
Morgan saw the matchup as a special experience for her team to play at UPenn’s Palestra, which is often known as the “Cathedral of College Basketball.” Haverford ended up losing 81-46, but both Morgan and her players enjoyed the occasion.
Cook said, “They were obviously better than us. They are Division 1, but we put up a good fight. I was really happy with how we played. At one point in the second quarter a couple of their starters were out and we closed the gap really quick. Their coach called a timeout and yelled at them and threw all their starters back in. That’s was our win right there. We messed them up a little bit.”
As for next year, Morgan says she hope the program can continue to be regularly challenging for the Centennial Conference title, and maybe even make a deeper run in the national tournament. “But honestly”, she explained, “I just want to continue getting the same kind of students we are getting. They are remarkable.”
Image credit: Ethan Lyne
