NORTHAMPTON — How does five in a row sound, Smith College?

After stomping No. 5 Salve Regina 96-54 in the NEWMAC semifinals in front of a packed house at Ainsworth Gymnasium on Friday night, the Smith College basketball team will compete in the conference title game for the fifth consecutive season. The Pioneers have won the last four, and they have eyes on yet another. Smith will host No. 6 MIT on Sunday afternoon.

“It’s the extension of the legacies of a lot of great players and coaches,” Pioneers head coach Lynn Hersey, now in her 18th season at Smith, said of her program’s consistency. “We’ve got to lock in for Sunday’s championship game and try to finish it for this team and a lot of teams before us that set the precedent and put us in the position to hit this historic mark.”

If multiple trips to the Elite Eight and Final Four, and one to the national championship game to go along with the NEWMAC dominance wasn’t enough to show how well-coached Smith has been under Hersey, Friday’s display of depth certainly was.

The Pioneers erupted for 51 bench points in the win, and at about the 5-minute mark of the third quarter, Hersey yanked her starters for the rest of the night. Smith’s second and third units came in and continued to execute on both ends of the floor.

In the fourth quarter, the Pioneers outscored Salve Regina 30-14. A remarkable 13 different Smith players scored, and there was no drop-off from the starting five to its bench group. Hersey has all 16 players on her team engaged and ready to go whenever their numbers are called.

“We push hard at practice,” Hersey said. “Yes, we’re trying to win this year’s championship. That’s always the goal. But we’re working on building what you need foundationally for next year’s championship at the same time. We have high expectations no matter who is playing on the court, and it was really great to see our younger players get in for this moment with a big crowd and play playoff basketball. They handled the moment together as a group.”

Graduate student Ally Landau wasted no time setting the tone for Smith in the opening frame on Friday. Landau, who transferred to Smith after four years at Haverford, scored 13 of the Pioneers’ 19 points in the first 10 minutes. She tossed in 20 points on the night, all of them coming in the first half. Landau recorded five steals and five rebounds as well, doing everything for Smith including knocking down a trio of 3-pointers.

When Landau chose to come to Smith for her final season of college basketball, what sold her on the Pioneers was the elite level of coaching and winning. The New Jersey native certainly isn’t taking her last few weeks of college basketball for granted.

“All I wanted was to be able to compete at the national level, and that’s exactly what this program does every year,” Landau said. “It’s been fun to be a part of… It’s really special to me. This is what I’ve dreamt of my entire basketball career. So to be able to do it with such an amazing team is really awesome.”

Landau’s assertiveness led to a 47-23 halftime lead for the hosts. The Pioneers had a 13-point lead at the break in the quarterfinals before No. 8 Coast Guard made things interesting in the second half. They knew more work was to be done.

Jane Loo (eight points) scored the first half dozen points of the second half, and the rout was on. Hersey had no starters on the floor out of the third quarter’s media timeout, but Smith’s production remained the same. That spilled into the fourth quarter, where the Pioneers played arguably their best 10 minutes of basketball of the postseason. Salve Regina still had its starters in, but it didn’t matter.

Maggie Fleming (12 points), Uta Nakamura (10 points), Virginia Johnson (10 points) and Co. were too much to handle.

“It was awesome to watch,” Landau said. “Very few athletes get to experience something like this, so it’s amazing that everyone got the opportunity to play and help out the team.”

Smith College (25-2) is a guaranteed lock for the NCAA Division 3 tournament, but it wants the automatic bid. The Pioneers aim for NEWMAC title No. 5 on Sunday afternoon. Tip off is slated for 1 p.m.