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The Savage 7 Success Story

The Savage 7 Success Story

Reflecting on a historic postseason run for UMass women's basketball

Breen, Kulesza, Mayo, Ngalakulondi, Philoxy, Taylor, White.

What if I told you that a team was en route to its conference tournament...with just seven active players on the plane?

The to-do list: win four games in four days; bring home the 2021 Atlantic 10 Championship; play in the national postseason. And against all odds, the University of Massachusetts women’s basketball team did nearly all of that.

Despite the toughest of circumstances, Massachusetts turned in a runner-up tournament finish in the A-10 and received an at-large bid to the Women’s NIT–the program’s first national postseason appearance since 1998.

“Wait. They did WHAT with seven,” you asked?

Yup. First postseason since ’98. First run to the A-10 title game in just as long. Lowest seed to play for the crown since 2014. First season in UMass women’s basketball history with multiple postseason wins. All with seven players.

While the Minutewomen came up just one game short in chase of their first-ever A-10 title, the special run captured the attention of Western Massachusetts. TV stations in Boston noticed. UMass was trending on Twitter at one point during the A-10 Championship Game. People had caught on and the hype was evident.

"How??"

Well, how much time do you have?

This is the improbable March 2021 story of Massachusetts women’s basketball. Nicknaming themselves the Savage 7, it’s the tale of a group that persevered in the face of a global pandemic, a two-week midseason pause and a short bench come tournament time.

 * * *

2020-21 Savage 7

As the calendar turned to March and the regular season wrapped, the Minutewomen put their focus on the Atlantic 10 Championship in Richmond, Virginia. Seeded seventh in the field, the Minutewomen earned a First Round bye and were slotted against No. 10 seed Saint Joseph’s in the Second Round.

UMass opened the Atlantic 10 Championship with a 79-69 overtime thriller over the Hawks, led by a game-high 21 points from Sydney Taylor as four Minutewomen finished in double figures, debuting freshman early enrollee Stefanie Kulesza along the way. That performance was followed with an upset of No. 2 seed Fordham on March 12 in the Quarterfinals by an 80-70 score. Taylor tied a career-high with 27 points on 8-of-14 from the field, adding six rebounds.

For the first time since March 2002, UMass was into the Semifinals...with seven players–two of whom weren’t even born in March 2002.

* * *

Team Celebration
Sam Breen

UMass clashed with Saint Louis the following day, a spot in the Championship Final on the line.

Logging a season-high 90 points on 55% shooting (32-of-58) and tying a season-low with just nine fouls committed on the afternoon, the Minutewomen refused to pack it in. They were determined. They played with heart. And that all produced a 90-81 win over the Billikens, taking down another higher seed (3).

Sam Breen (11-of-16; 10 rebounds) and Destiney Philoxy (11-of-17; six rebounds; two assists) had nights for the ages, each with 28 points, marking the first time in more than 20 years that two Minutewomen have scored 25 or more points in an Atlantic 10 Championship game. Ber’Nyah Mayo also reached double-figures for the Minutewomen with 13 points and a team-high four assists.

They were headed to the championship game for the first time in 23 years.

People counted them out and now they were about to play for hardware on national TV.

* * *

Angelique Ngalakulondi

Host VCU was the last team standing between Massachusetts and its first-ever conference championship.

The Rams were lights out from downtown in the first half, and not deterred, Massachusetts made adjustments out of the halftime break to claw back with a 10-4 third quarter run. UMass briefly led multiple times in the fourth period, continuing to battle but were unable to get closer than three down the stretch. In the end, it was an 81-69 result that went VCU's way.

Still, Angelique Ngalakulondi had a career day that UMass fans will remember for a long, long time. Ngalakulondi finished with a career-high 19 points and nine rebounds off the bench, eclipsing her previous career-high scoring (11) before halftime. She was absolutely dominant on the offensive glass, securing seven of her nine boards there and directly leading to 10 Massachusetts points.

For their performances, Breen, Philoxy and Taylor were all named to the Atlantic 10 All-Championship Team. It capped a week that had earlier seen Breen and Philoxy collect A-10 All-Conference laurels, as well as Breen placed on the league’s All-Academic Team.

* * *

On March 15, head coach Tory Verdi called a team meeting to deliver the news he’d wanted the green-light to share since arriving at UMass in 2016.

Bojangles' Coliseum - 2021
It was official: the Maroon and White were postseason-bound, receiving an at-large bid to the WNIT. The Savage 7 were headed to the Charlotte, North Carolina regional and the Bojangles’ Coliseum to make the fourth national postseason appearance in program history.

After a tough matchup with Villanova in Round One, the Minutewomen moved into the Consolation Bracket against Charlotte and used a total team effort to record the program’s first win in a postseason game since 1995–an 81-75 triumph over the 49ers.

Breen tied a UMass postseason record with 25 points, Ngalakulondi and Taylor poured in 16 apiece and Philoxy logged 12 points. The versatile Taylor set a career-high with seven assists, with Philoxy adding six dimes as well.

The team had advanced to the next day’s Consolation Final with a chance to save the best for last, and do something never done before at UMass: win two games in the same postseason.

Ber'Nyah Mayo

A day after Breen tied the single-game postseason scoring record, she rewrote the mark in the record book with 27 points, followed up with 25 more from Taylor and two others in double figures to spark an absolute runaway effort and a dominant 95-71 win over Ohio. Philoxy, one of the top ball distributors in the country all season long, had nine assists–her sixth game on the season that Philoxy recorded as many dimes in in a game. The Queens, N.Y. native also added four points and three rebounds.

It also marked Verdi's 150th career victory as a collegiate head coach.

History had been made.

WBB Team vs. Ohio - 2021 WNIT

* * *

After every game since the 2019-20 season, the Massachusetts coaching staff has selected a difference-making player who “planted the flag” in that night's contest. You didn't have to be the leading scorer in the game, you didn't need to set a rebounding record. Just someone who got after it for 40 minutes.

During this team's special run, it was impossible to pick just one player who planted the flag. After all, with seven players, isn't everyone a difference-maker?

So that's exactly what the coaching staff did all postseason:

Massachusetts wrapped up the season with the third-highest NCAA NET ranking in the Atlantic 10 Conference (94), and boasted both the A-10's best scoring offense (71.7 points per game) and top ball distribution effort (15.2 assists per game).

In Breen and Taylor, the Maroon and White were the only A-10 team with two players standing top-5 in the league's scoring leaderboard. Philoxy was among the nation's best in assists with 6.5 dimes per game, tied for fifth in the country.

Breen, the double-double machine, was one of only 15 players in the nation with as many double-doubles, ranking second in the A-10 in scoring (18 ppg) and fourth in rebounds (10 rpg).

As the Minutewomen close the book on 2020-21, it's clear the program is continuing a theme of upward momentum under head coach Tory Verdi's leadership. In 2018-19, it was an Atlantic 10 Quarterfinals appearance for the first time in over a decade. A year later, it was a program-record-tying 20 wins. This past season, it was a return to the national postseason and two victories in a national tournament for the first time ever…with just seven players at the end.

Breen, Kulesza, Mayo, Ngalakulondi, Philoxy, Taylor, White.

With the Savage 7 set to return in 2021-22 and a group of highly-touted new faces set to join the Minutewomen, there's reason to remain excited about what the future holds for Massachusetts women's basketball.

Follow the Minutewomen on social media @UMassWBB for continued updates around the program throughout the offseason.