NCAC Tournament Preview: Women’s Basketball

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This Week's Outlook: The College of Wooster women's basketball team travels to Springfield as the eighth-seeded Fighting Scots (1-24, 0-14 NCAC) will face No. 1 seed Wittenberg University (20-4, 13-1) in the first round of the 2023 North Coast Athletic Conference Tournament at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

Media Coverage: Fans can follow Wooster's journey in the tournament through the available live stream and live stats webpages provided by Wittenberg when they become available. Fans can also follow the women's basketball team's Twitter account @WoosterWBB for periodic score updates.

Determining the One Seed: Wittenberg and DePauw split their meetings and finished atop the NCAC standings at 13-1, which meant going to a coin flip. DePauw won and elected to host the NCAC Tournament semifinals/championships as the No. 2 seed should they advance past the quarterfinal round.

Finale Recap: On Saturday, the Scots fell to DePauw 84-45, which was an improvement from the 100-43 matchup in Greencastle, Ind. earlier this year. First-year Ella Biondi led the way with a double-double of 22 points and 13 rebounds. Classmates Shalen Guilliams scored 11 points, and Mia Walker finished with seven.

Biondi Surge: Biondi has had a successful first-year campaign, averaging 11.3 points per game for second on the team and leading the squad at 8.5 rebounds per game. However, she has put up some of her best numbers the last two contests. She is averaging 20.5 points, 11 rebounds and 6 blocks across the two games last week. In Wednesday's contest, she fell just shy of a triple double (19 points, 9 rebounds, 8 blocks), while her eight blocks tied a single game program record. She then recorded a 22-point, 13-rebound double-double against DePauw.

More Fresh Faces: It's been a season of growing pains for the Scots, who feature six first years on a roster of 11. However, there have been some bright spots and hope for a better future with the play of their first years. Four first years are atop the list of minutes played. While Biondi controls the inside, the two that lead the backcourt are Guilliams and Walker. Guilliams entered midway through the season but in 16 games played, she leads the team with 12.5 points per game, 3-point percentage at 34.7 percent and 1.8 steals per game. Guilliams has also reached double figures in each of the last five games. Walker is third on the team at 10.1 points per game. She finds success when getting to the foul line with a 73 percent clip, but as the primary ballhandler, Walker must limit turnovers for the Scots to be successful. She has reached double figures in six of the last seven games including a high of 27 points in a loss at Oberlin College. In addition, Ella Dean and Erica Beaty have seen valuable minutes off the bench. Chloe Pordash started in 11 of 13 games played, but she has been out with an injury for the latter half of the season.

Series Versus Wittenberg: Wittenberg took both contests against the Scots this year, 99-65 and 52-44. In the second matchup in January, Walker scored a then career-high 22 points as Wooster tried to amount the upset late with a 21-point fourth quarter. However, a slow first quarter put the Scots in a hole they could not dig out of. Gulliams and Biondi combined to score just six points, so with more contribution from that duo, it could make for an interesting game Tuesday.