When the NCAA Division 3 Women’s Basketball bracket was released on March 3, Smith College was thrilled to be hosting yet another opening weekend, just as it had done the previous three tournaments. But despite earning the right to play first and second round games at home, the Pioneers were given an extremely rigorous path to a potential third straight Final Four.

Smith had to play SUNY-Cobleskill in the Round of 64, a team that won 24 games – including a triumph over Tufts, one of only two teams to beat the Pioneers this season – and its conference championship to punch a ticket into the tournament. Eventually Smith pulled away and won, setting up a clash with Amherst in the Round of 32. The Mammoths have won three national championships since 2010, and went to a Final Four in 2022. It was going to be another dog fight for head coach Lynn Hersey’s bunch.

Ally Landau banked in a runner with 0.3 seconds on the clock to win it for Smith, 52-50 – sending the Pioneers to a fourth consecutive Sweet 16. Their reward? A date with the No. 1 overall seed in Division 3, undefeated Bowdoin (29-0). For a team that won its fifth NEWMAC title in a row, Smith’s draw was probably the toughest out of all the first-round teams to host. And it isn’t going to get any easier now traveling to Bowdoin Friday night for a 7:30 p.m. tip.

Smith has experience playing up in Brunswick, Maine, as the Pioneers made the trip north for the 2019 Round of 32, a regular-season game in November of 2021 and most recently for the Elite Eight roughly 365 days ago – when the Pioneers defeated Bowdoin 52-47 to advance to the Final Four.

“We’ve been there before,” Hersey said. “We feel like we know their gym, we know their environment. We really enjoy playing there. It’s a great place for us to be headed for the Sweet 16, and I think we’re really looking forward to it.”

Hersey admitted that last Saturday’s thriller over Amherst was an emotional win, but after enjoying it for about 24 hours, it was back to business on Monday. Body recovery, film study and game-plan preparation has filled Smith’s week leading up to this Friday.

The Pioneers’ coaching staff has watched some film from last year’s game with the Polar Bears, but also spent time studying tape from Bowdoin’s conference/NCAA tournament games to get a more recent understanding of their opponent’s tendencies.

“It’s a combination of both, because they do have a significant amount of pieces from last year’s team back, so it’s always good to see what your game plan was, what worked really well, what didn’t,” Hersey said. “And then it’s nice to see who they played recently and what their opponents did against them. We’ve been deep into film and we feel pretty confident we know them well.”

Initial takeaways from the film indicate exactly what Hersey saw last March – a team that is very detailed and disciplined on both sides of the floor. Defensively, Bowdoin throws several unique ball-screen defenses at opposing backcourts. Whether it be hedging the pick high, trapping the ball-handler or aggressively switching, they’ve shown just about everything this season. The longtime Smith head coach praised Bowdoin’s defensive prowess, noting it’s clear why the Polar Bears have earned the top seed in the country this season.

All-American Sydney Jones leads the Polar Bears’ offense as a guard who can both score and create open shots for her teammates. Taking away one of those options is what Hersey hopes her team can do.

“When you have a player who’s multi-dimensional in how she impacts the offense, you have to think through not just your game plan for her as a scorer, but what you can do to stall some of the ways she play-makes for her team,” she said.

Certainly a team must do everything at a high level in order to advance in this tournament, but there are three important elements Smith must control in order to spend another night in Brunswick. The Pioneers have to win the battle on the glass (which is something they didn’t do against Amherst and it allowed the Mammoths back in the game), they need to get back on defense to limit Bowdoin’s clean transition looks (about 30 percent of the Polar Bears’ points come from pushing the ball up the floor, per Hersey), and lastly, the speed of Smith’s guards.

Landau, Jane Loo, Hannah Martin and Uta Nakamura can match the pace Bowdoin wants to play, especially Landau, who loves to get out and run after grabbing a rebound.

Hersey has been challenging Smith’s veterans – seniors Jazmyn Washington and Loo, and graduate senior Landau – all postseason to help shoulder the load. Not just with on-court production, but weathering the emotions of a tournament game and helping the underclassmen deal with the pressure.

In a hostile environment like Bowdoin, that trio is going to have to show up in a huge way for Smith once again.

“I need them in an attack-mode mindset,” Hersey said of her seniors. “We’re going to have to go get this one. This isn’t going to be given. It’s a mentality of coming out and attacking in the ways that we are capable of, putting [Bowdoin] on their heels. I don’t think the moment – the crowd, being in a Sweet 16 game – I don’t think any of those things are really anything that’s going to trip us up mentally. But we need our veterans to make big plays, and the teams that win, they have that. They have a big three, a group that can swing something offensively or get three or four stops in a row. It’s about your players making those plays, and I feel like our veteran group is very prepared for those moments. And, you know, hopefully things will go our way.”