UMD Women’s Basketball’s ‘Will to Win’ Propels them to Elite Eight
No. 2 UMD will tip off the Elite Eight in St. Joseph, Missouri on Monday against No. 7 Assumption at 2:30 PM.
DULUTH, Minn.- Down eleven points with a minute and a half to go, the UMD women’s basketball team pulled off the comeback of a lifetime, punching their ticket into the Elite Eight for the first time in program history. The one thing the Bulldogs leaned on in that victory? The will to win.
“I think that’s out foundation right now. We want to keep winning games, we want to continue just to play too. I know me an Maesyn, we only have three games possible left and so I think we’re just kind of holding on to that. It was really exciting to see just how far we came, because usually a lot of teams would crumble in those situations and lose trust and we never did, and so that’s a really exciting thing going in and that was a really tough game to do it but that just shows that we can really beat any team in this country,” says graduate forward Brooke Olson.
Now the Bulldogs have their sights set on knocking off No. 7 Assumption, a team UMD nor any NSIC team has any history with, making the game plan simple, play tough Bulldogs brand of basketball.
“When we’re looking at these teams and their conference, I think it might be a little bit different style of basketball. So, I’ve been going through a lot of film just trying to get a better feel for their style of play and figure out how we can be us in whatever system they’re running, but it’s been fun to watch a new team,” says head coach Mandy Pearson.
“Every team at this point is going to be good and going to have a lot of strengths so, we’re just using what we’ve done all season and getting our mindset back to play another team that we haven’t played, just use our strengths and hopefully play our game on the court on Monday and see where that takes us,” says graduate guard Maesyn Theisen.
No. 2 UMD will tip off the Elite Eight in St. Joseph, Missouri on Monday against No. 7 Assumption at 2:30 PM.
