It’s no secret that the Blackburn women’s basketball program has suffered for years, failing to put together a winning season since 2009. For years the phrase “just Blackburn,” presumably coined by many SLIAC opponents, has been synonymous with ‘underdog,’ ‘lesser’ ‘a cupcake team’ and even ‘losers.’ And while that underdog mentality can sometimes be a good thing,, after awhile it gets old. Just ask Chicago’s ‘Lovable Losers’ who spent 108 years as such, which leads to another good thing about being an underdog. It can’t last forever, nothing ever does and in their first game of the 2017-2018 season, the Blackburn women’s basketball team made a statement: no more cupcakes. This isn’t last year. This, is this year. They aren’t ‘just’ anything, they are Blackburn.
With three of their five starters playing in their first collegiate game Tuesday night against Robert Morris University – Springfield, the Beavers had some proving to do and they didn’t take much time to do so. It took just 18 seconds for junior Gariel Pierce to win the tip, set up their offense and allow sophomore Maria Cline to find freshman point guard Kate Smith, who knocked down the first shot of her college career, putting Blackburn up 3-0.
Smith’s night was far from over as she continued to put on a clinic, finishing 5-9 from behind the three-point line and 6-11 from the field, leading the team in scoring with 18 points.
Fellow freshmen Savannah Kruse and Jenna Dudra also contributed major minutes to the Beavers’ success, not succumbing to the stigma that freshmen need time to adjust to the pace of a college gamel. The trio played fearlessly and combined for 36 points on 12-30 shooting (5-12 on three-pointers), nine steals and eight assists in 80 minutes of work.
The contributions from the freshmen was impossible to ignore. They dominated the box score for Blackburn, accounting for 48 of the team’s 61 points, as well as 12 of 14 steals. They weren’t afraid and they most certainly didn’t back down. And perhaps the most promising thing to come out of a dominant 61-46 victory is that they’re only going to get better from here.
With more games comes more experience and more confidence, and when it does, the SLIAC won’t know what hit them.