SLU women find their boiling point to earn first trip to NCAA Tournament
Among the lessons Rebecca Tillett learned from her father the coach was the boiling point of water at 212 degrees and the methods of integrating a seemingly random number into a basketball team’s culture.
The first-year St. Louis University women’s basketball coach saw her team start to warm five weeks ago and reach a simmer at the end of the regular season.
A furious boil ensued at the Atlantic 10 tournament, in which the Billikens earned their first NCAA Tournament berth Sunday with a 91-85 overtime win over Massachusetts in the championship game in Wilmington, Del.
“When you’re working with a team, you’re striving to hit that mark, the temperature we can play our absolute best for a long period of time,” Tillett said. “That message keeps resonating with us. Boy, was our team at 212 degrees today.”
SLU won for the 11th time in 12 games to erase the memory of a lackluster start to the season and will find out next Sunday its seeding and opponent.
It took 48 years and eight coaches to find the formula good enough to be among the 68 teams in the NCAA field.
It came in the form of key returning players, important transfer pieces and the refusal to buckle, whether it was when the Billikens were 6-16 or when UMass made a 3-pointer with one second left Sunday to force overtime.
“At the end of the fourth quarter, if we weren’t as resilient as we are, it would have crushed a lot of teams’ spirit,” said guard Kyla McMakin, who scored 27 points. “I don’t know if it’s an underdog mentality that everyone has or playing with a chip on our shoulder, but this team is the most mentally strong no matter what we’re going through. It’s joyful passion no matter what, and it played a big role.”
Julia Martinez was the star of the game and voted most outstanding player of the A-10 tournament after finishing with the second triple-double in SLU history (17 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists).
And there was no one more joyful than post player Brooke Flowers, who decided to use her final year of eligibility when Tillett was hired. The story was re-told of the first team meeting when Flowers told everyone she had returned to win a championship and get to the NCAA Tournament.
“It feels unreal,” she said. “I’ve just kind of been looking around and taking it all in. … I’m thankful I decided to stay for a final year. It couldn’t have turned out any better. I agree we had an underdog mentality. We knew there were obstacles we’d go through, but I never doubted this talented group.”
Tillett had one of her indiscriminate encounters with 212 before the game and shared it with the team. She decided to watch one more clip of film at the last minute and saw the time on the game clock was at 2:12.
“I ran to tell the team, and they were probably thinking, ‘This woman is a little bit nuts,’” she said.
SLU started well and never lost steam against the No. 1 seed in the A-10 — a team the Billikens had defeated at home two weeks earlier.
The game was tied after one quarter and again at halftime. The Billikens, who evened their record at 17-17, built an eight-point lead in the fourth, only to see the Minutewomen rally.
Instead of wilting from disappointment in the extra period, SLU turned up the heat and went ahead by 10 points when a 3-pointer by McMakin gave the Billikens the lead for good with two minutes left.
“It’s just us believing and trying to prove to ourselves and others we could do it,” Martinez said. “We had a new coach, new team but why not get it this year. What was holding us back? The whole month of February we said, ‘This is what we’re going to do’ and everyone took a step up.”
SLU opened the preseason losing a game to Division II Maryville, showing that time was going to be needed for the players to learn to play together. When it happened, the Billikens were able to beat all of the top teams in the A-10 and three games in three days in the tourney.
“The storyline for our women was staying strong to the process,” Tillett said. “It’s not easy in anything in life. They did it over and over and over again.”
