NORTHAMPTON — After watching for just 10 minutes, I reached for my phone, picked it up and texted as many of my friends who love the game of basketball as I could.

You need to watch this Smith College team play this year.

It was Dec. 30, a perhaps insignificant Monday afternoon regular season game against Oswego State at Ainsworth Gymnasium, but the environment indicated otherwise.

I walked into the bottom floor of Ainsworth, opened the double doors to the staircase and ascended three flights to the top where Pioneers head coach Lynn Hersey has created a place nobody in Division 3 across the country wants to play. The game was about to start, but my attention hadn’t made it there yet. I continued to take in the surroundings.

The 1996 Chicago Bulls theme song rang through the speakers — bouncing off the white-painted bricks that have become a staple of Ainsworth — as Smith’s starting five took the court for tip off. Two giant blue banners draped from the ceiling above the scorer’s table, illustrating Smith’s two Final Four runs from 2023 and 2024. A passionate student section decked in Pioneers blue and white were as eager for action as the players on the floor.

“Different here” is Smith’s slogan, and has been for the past half decade. And after walking into Ainsworth and watching one quarter, it was quite easy to tell that it truly is different here.

Coaches want their teams to excel at “the little things” — diving on the floor for a loose ball, taking a charge or making the extra pass on offense are a few examples — throughout a season. Hersey has built her program on them, and it stems off the court as well.

Yes, the Pioneers talk relentlessly on defense, consistently make the correct rotation and crash the glass to limit their opponent to one shot. But what they do in the huddle and on the bench is almost just as important. Those who aren’t in the game are always standing and cheering, encouraging the five on the floor. Everybody stands up and slaps five when somebody is subbed out. And during the timeout huddles, every single Smith player is engaged in what Hersey, any of her assistants or any player, is saying. All eyes are locked on who’s speaking.

Having attended many collegiate games at the Div. 1 and Div. 3 levels, that isn’t something that occurs everywhere.

“A lot of it is the culture and the experiences we’ve had coming into this season,” Hersey said earlier this year, referring to her team’s habits. “It’s what we know. It’s our identity. That’s who we try to be every single year and we want to uphold that standard. It takes a buy-in from the players to do those small details really well, to buy into a role and to really invest for the group. We’ll hopefully keep building off of that.”

Smith certainly kept building, as it reached an unprecedented third consecutive Final Four this season, and a second straight Division 3 national championship game. Now, I must admit, I had my doubts, at first, about this Pioneers team. Last season, Smith lost its three leading scorers in Jessie Ruffner, Sofia Rosa and Ally Yamada to graduation. When I spoke with Coach Hersey to write a season preview before the Pioneers had even played a game, she mentioned the Final Four and winning a national championship. That conversation took place during the first week of November. March felt so far away, and I was genuinely shocked, because even if that is the expectation, most coaches don’t often vocalize it that early.

But that’s become the standard at Smith. And if that’s what you’re pursuing, why not make it known right away?

Even after departing from their “big 3,” the Pioneers didn’t skip a beat. Hersey brought in graduate transfer Ally Landau from Haverford, and Jane Loo and Hannah Martin took on expanded scoring roles. Of course Hersey would figure it out, like she has done each of the 18 years she’s coached at Smith.

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Smith players anxiously ate Herrell’s ice cream as they awaited their draw in the NCAA Division 3 Women’s Basketball Tournament in the Ainsworth conference room on March 3. The NEWMAC championship trophy sat in the middle of the table the players were sitting around. Their fifth straight conference crown — a remarkable feat — helped them receive an automatic bid into the dance, but that nervous feeling still percolated as the bracket reveal began.

The Pioneers didn’t have to wait too long to hear their name, as Smith was in the first group of teams displayed on the screen. It took a second, but claps eventually came from everyone in the room to celebrate yet another tournament appearance.

Being in the room for the selection show, I wondered why Smith didn’t seem too excited. I thought it could be because they’re so used to it at this point, but then I saw the gauntlet the Pioneers had to go through to make it back to the title game. They were given a murderer’s row of opponents, a strange draw considering Smith’s stellar 26-2 record.

To get out of the first two rounds alone – which Smith earned the right to host – the Pioneers would have to beat 24-win, NAC-champion SUNY-Cobleskill and three-time national champion Amherst in a 24-hour span. If they did that, next would likely be undefeated NESCAC-champion, No. 1 Bowdoin.

When the selection show was over, Hersey addressed the team.

“What are you going to do to distinguish yourself from the rest of the teams in this tournament?” she asked her players. “I need a week filled with our best habits… This is what we do.”

The team took Hersey’s advice and won those three games to advance to the Elite Eight, where it knocked off 29-win, MIAC-champion Gustavus Adolphus by 11 to crack yet another Final Four. There, Wisconsin-Oshkosh, who the Pioneers beat in the Sweet Sixteen a year ago, was waiting for revenge. The Titans had a former Division 1 player on their roster, and many extremely talented individual players. But Smith played better as a team, and squeaked out a 49-47 victory to send them through to the championship.

In many of their tournament games this season, the Pioneers were smaller than their opponents, and on paper, probably not as talented. Yet Hersey, assistant coaches Jen MacAulay, Kat Puda, Sofia Rosa and Ally Yamada put together detailed scouting reports and game plans, and as the Smith players have done for several years now, they went out and executed to perfection.

Smith ultimately fell to NYU in the national title for the second straight season.

I’ve been around this team quite a bit this year, and I can say with certainty that nobody on the roster is satisfied with another runner-up finish. They are ready to get over the hump.

However for two straight seasons Smith has been a top two program out of the over 430 Division 3 teams in the entire country, and the Pioneers play right in little-old Northampton. They play in a small gym where shoulder-to-shoulder seating is expected, in front of some of the most spirited supporters across the nation. They play for Lynn Hersey, who preaches her team to play basketball in the sport’s purest form.

They’re the birthplace of women’s college basketball, and if you haven’t hopped on board yet, you’re missing out. Because Smith College is in the midst of an historic run that isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.