Before the final seconds ticked o the clock in the championship game of the Colonial Athletic Association women’s basketball tournament on March 16, you could count the number of times the Tigers had qualified for that bigger tournament—the Big Dance—on no hands.
But after junior Nukiya Mayo calmly made two free throws with five seconds left to seal TU’s historic 53-49 victory over Drexel, the reality of what they had accomplished began to hit the players. For the women’s basketball program, never won’t last forever.
The win punched TU’s inaugural ticket to the NCAA Tournament and capped a 20-win season—the program’s first since 2008. Picked to finish ninth in the CAA’s preseason poll, TU more than doubled its win total from a year ago. In the conference tournament, the Tigers calmly took down Delaware and Hofstra before edging the second-seeded Dragons in the title game. Mayo was named the Most Outstanding Player.
TU’s reward? A date with the sport’s ultimate Goliath, the University of Connecticut,
in the first round of the NCAAs. Taming the 11-time national champion Huskies turned
out to be too tall a task for the team, but even the 110-61 loss only put a slight
damper on what was an incredible season.
“We won 20 games, and [the current group has] never done that before,” Mayo told The Sun. “And we won a championship. So it’s just great to be a part of something that’s
never happened before.”
The future looks bright for this team, which returns four of five starters, six of
its top seven scorers, five of its top six rebounders, its top four steals leaders
and its top three assists leaders.
“I’m very proud, and I think we’re all very proud,” junior Q. Murray told The Sun. “When we saw that [poll] in the beginning of the season, we took that as motivation
because we knew what we were capable of, and we knew that with the talent that we
had, we just had to put it all together. We did what everybody said we couldn’t do.”
Turns out, everybody was wrong.
In just her second season, Diane Richardson was named the Colonial Athletic Association Coach of the Year. TU more than doubled its win total from the year before and posted its first winning season since 2012. The postseason was magical for Richardson and the Tigers—she led the team to the CAA tournament title and its first berth in the NCAA Tournament.
Layups? Not for Nukiya Mayo. In warmups before the February 17 game, the 6-foot-3-inch junior dunked. Student manager Jeff Findlater captured the moment on video, and it was shared on social media. Mayo went viral in less than 48 hours, and by the end of the season the clip had 1,654,901 views on Twitter and Instagram. The dunk was retweeted by SportsCenter and got a flame emoji from Miami Heat legend Dwyane Wade.
Freshman Jordan Cornelius shot a final-round 68 at the Waikoloa Resort Kings’ Course in Honolulu to tie the school record for the lowest round. She was two under par on both the front nine and the back nine, which included an eagle on 18. She finished tied for 10th overall, and TU finished sixth at the Anuenue Spring Break Classic.
Jack Saunderson set a new CAA record at the NCAA Championships in March. The senior swam a time of 1:44.97 in the 200-yard individual medley preliminaries. Later in the meet he finished seventh in the 200-yard butterfly to become a four-time All-American. “When he is pushing himself, he can make swimming look effortless,” TU coach Jake Shrum says.
On March 4, for the first time in the program’s Division I history, the men’s lacrosse team ranked first in all three national polls. TU occupied the top spot in the USILA Warrior/ New Balance Division I Coaches’ Poll, the Inside Lacrosse Media Poll and the Nike/US Lacrosse Magazine Top 20 following its 12-10 win over then-No. 1 Loyola at Johnny Unitas Stadium.