Photo by Scott Burkhalter/HSU Athletics
BELTON–Back to Abilene they go.
The UMHB women’s basketball team will take the court in a familiar gym on Friday night, as The Cru heads to an NCAA regional hosted by Hardin-Simmons in Abilene, Texas. It is the same site at which this past weekend’s American Southwest Conference Tournament was contested, as UMHB posted a 1-1 record at the league tournament.
Now The Cru will be tasked with finding a way to win in Abilene for the second straight weekend, as UMHB earned a Pool C (at-large) bid to the national tournament on Monday afternoon. It marks the second NCAA Tournament appearance for the program within the last three seasons and the first under head coach Katie Novak-Lenoir.
It provides for a unique storyline as UMHB’s first-round opponent is Trinity (TX), the champions out of the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) and the first team the Crusaders faced during the 2023-24 regular season. Trinity pulled out an 84-74 win in that Nov. 11 meeting in Marshall, Texas, as the Tigers put up 36 fourth-quarter points, erasing UMHB’s double-digit lead. UMHB then answered that loss by winning 16 straight games.
The Cru is set to face Trinity on Friday, March 1, at 5:30 p.m. CT.
Should UMHB get past Trinity, the second round opponent on Saturday at 8 p.m. would be the winner of Hardin-Simmons and Occidental. Both teams won their respective conference championships this season, with HSU taking down UMHB, 84-74, and Occidental defeating California Lutheran, 66-58. HSU enters the tournament with a 24-3 record, while Occidental is 22-5.
Heading into Selection Monday, there was talk with with Millsaps’ win over Centre in the SAA championship, UMHB would host a pod that included Hardin-Simmons, Trinity, and Millsaps, considering the distance from Millsaps to UMHB was within the 500-mile threshold necessary for the NCAA to send a team to its pod via bus rather than plane. The limitation of flights is a critical aspect of the bracketing process for Division III national tournaments, and finding ways to bus as many teams as possible, rather than using flights to complete the bracket, is a goal of the national committee.
Notably, the distance from Millsaps to Hardin-Simmons is beyond 500 miles, meaning Millsaps could not be in a pod hosted in Abilene. Instead, the committee opted to fly Millsaps to a pod hosted at DeSales in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania in order to host the regional at Hardin-Simmons. Occidental was then flown in from California, completing the four-team pod.
UMHB will make its fourth NCAA Tournament appearance in program history and holds a 6-2 record in postseason national tournament play. The Cru has reached the Sectional round in all three of its previous appearances.
Admission to the tournament is $15 for adults and $10 for children, per a release from the UMHB athletics department.
