The women’s basketball team earned the sixth seed in the upcoming NESCAC tournament after going 1-1 in a pair of games this past weekend against conference rivals Bowdoin and Colby. The Cardinals fell to Bowdoin on Friday by a 63-52 score before beating Colby on Saturday in come-from-behind fashion by a 66-55 final. This win earned the team its spot in the playoffs.

Tipping off against the Polar Bears of Bowdoin on Friday, the Cardinals were never able to pull away in what was, for the most part, a back-and-forth contest. The first half featured three lead changes, with Bowdoin starting hot before being cooled off by Wesleyan. The Cardinals were able to forge a five-point lead late in the half after Lucy Sprung G’08 connected from downtown, but Bowdoin fought back to head to the locker room with a 32-27 lead.

The second half was even tighter, as the teams traded baskets in the opening minutes. The decisive run in the game came after the teams were deadlocked at 41 midway through the half. It was at this time the Polar Bears went on a 14-2 run to take a comfortable 54-43 lead with just over six minutes left to play. Wesleyan was able to cut the lead to as little as six, 56-50, before Bowdoin pulled away for the 63-52 final.

Sprung led the Cardinals with 16 points and seven rebounds, while Ali Fourney ’09 chipped in 13 points and six rebounds.

Despite this loss, the Cardinals had to regroup for an important tilt with Colby the next day, which would decide playoff seeding for this coming weekend.

“We knew this past weekend we would be playing two tough games,” said point guard McKinley Tennant ’11. “We ended up losing to Bowdoin, which was not good, but hopefully we will be able to play them again in the playoffs.”

“Coming off this loss, we knew we had to forget about it and beat Colby the next day,” she added.

That is exactly what the Cardinals were able to do on Saturday afternoon. After a sluggish start, the Cardinals found themselves in a deep hole as the Mules jumped out to a 32-19 lead. However, in the last five minutes of the opening half, Wesleyan was able to cut the lead to nine and entered the locker room trailing 38-29.

The Cards came out to start the second half looking like a different team. Fourney scored eight of her game-high 29 points during a 12-0 Wesleyan run to open the period. A pair of Fourney free throws at 12:20 extended Wesleyan’s advantage to 41-38 before Colby tied it with a three-pointer at 11:56—its first basket of the half. The teams then went back and forth before Fourney was able to hit a layup on a beautiful feed from Tennant that broke a 53-53 tie and triggered a decisive 13-2 run for the Cardinals over the last three minutes for the 66-55 final.

“I think our game against Colby was one of our best games this season,” Tennant said. “The underclassmen knew that this game meant so much to the seniors, being their last game ever…at Wesleyan, and [our] four sophomores and seven freshmen have given us so much this year…they really led us on the court yesterday with the win, and we all were so happy for them.”

The victory locked up the sixth seed for Wesleyan in the NESCAC Championship. Fourney finished with an outstanding line, going 11-for-16 from the field for 29 points while adding four assists, five steals and three blocks. She now has triple-digit career totals in every major statistical category—including 118 three-pointers, 228 assists and 276 steals—as the three blocks put her at 100 for her record-setting career.

Wesleyan will pay a visit to third-seeded Tufts this weekend for its first-round matchup. The Cardinals fell in Medford during the regular season 75-63 and will look for revenge against the Jumbos—the same team that knocked them out in the NESCAC semifinals last season—in the playoffs. Last season, Wesleyan finished 17-9 but was passed over for an at-large NCAA Championship berth in favor of fellow semifinal loser Bowdoin (18-8), even though Wesleyan defeated the Polar Bears 62-49 in Brunswick. The Cardinals know they will need to advance far in this year’s tournament to have any chance at an NCAA bid.

“We’re really excited about being seeded 6th because we had a lot of trouble earlier in the season and we were…worried about possibly not even making the playoffs at all,” Fourney said. “Drawing Tufts is also a great way for us to get revenge on them for [knocking] us out of the playoffs last season. There is, however, a lot of pressure on us to win these next few games because if we don’t make it to the NESCAC finals, there is no way for us to make it to the NCAA’s, which is our ultimate goal.”