BRUNSWICK — One of the biggest fears Megan Phelps had entering Friday’s game ended up being the last thing she had to worry about.

The second-year head coach of the Bowdoin women’s basketball team had concerns about how her team would fare on the boards against Baldwin Wallace. The Yellow Jackets, after all, were beating foes by an average of 11 rebounds per game entering a Division III Sweet 16 matchup with the Polar Bears.

“Sorry, guys — I was really worried about that,” said Phelps, seated next to sophomore Maria Belardi and senior Callie Godfrey in the postgame press conference.

Bowdoin quashed its coach’s fear with a dominant performance down low, outrebounding Baldwin Wallace 46-27 and scoring 38 points in the paint to the Yellow Jackets’ 12 in a 78-48 win. The Polar Bears advanced to host Smith College (28-3) at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Elite Eight.

Carly Davey scored a game-high 16 points for Bowdoin, which also got 15 points and seven rebounds from Sydney Jones, 14 points from Godfrey and 11 points from Belardi. Megan Tan and Jess Giorgio added nine and eight rebounds, respectively, for the Polar Bears.

Baldwin Wallace freshman guard Maddie Ebbert, left, play defense on Bowdoin sophomore guard Maria Belardi. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

It was a dream start for Bowdoin, which ran out to a 13-0 lead behind five early points from Carly Davey and four apiece from Callie Godfrey and Sydney Jones. Baldwin-Wallace then hit a pair of 3-pointers to stop the bleeding, but the Polar Bears hit right back with a 13-2 run to lead 26-8 after one.

“I thought our confidence just shot up once we had that great start,” Belardi said. “In our last couple games, we’ve kind of started slow, and it was kind of an emphasis this game to just go in, score quick and make them call that first timeout. We wanted to come out big, and I think we did that.”

“I think they made their first nine shots,” said Baldwin Wallace head coach Cheri Harrer. “Some of those shots were shots we didn’t want to give up, and others were just tough shots. They’re a great team. We didn’t play the way we’re capable of playing, and that’s disappointing, but take nothing away from Bowdoin.”

Baldwin Wallace, which shot 2 of 14 from the field in the first quarter, didn’t fare much better in the second (5 of 17). That allowed Bowdoin, which shot 9 of 18 in the period after going 11 of 14 in the first, to stretch its lead, taking a 46-22 halftime lead on a Jai Duval jump shot at the buzzer. 

Although the shots stopped falling for Bowdoin in the third quarter, Baldwin Wallace could only pull within 16 before the Polar Bears made eight straight free throws to push the margin back to 24. The Yellow Jackets never got closer than 23 in the fourth as Bowdoin secured its seventh Elite Eight berth in program history.

“One of our unofficial team mottos this year has been regression to the mean,” Phelps said. “We talked about that a little bit at halftime, that we were really shooting the ball exceptionally well in the first half, and if we were to cool off from 3 — which was likely to happen — we needed to make sure we were getting touches inside.”

When watching film, Phelps said, it became clear that Friday’s game would be a matchup of contrasting styles. She had concerns with Baldwin Wallace’s ability to set and read screens, and that, combined with the prospect of a packed Morrill Gymnasium, could have posed problems had the Polar Bears not been at their best.

“We talked a lot this week in practice about making sure our defensive communication was really tight,” Phelps said. “A sold-out crowd in Morrill is always exciting, but it makes it hard to hear each other, so calling those screens early and making sure we were back to kind of our basic defense (was very important).”

The win gave Bowdoin its first Elite Eight appearance since the Polar Bears reached back-to-back national championship games in 2018 and 2019. The team was set to play for a third consecutive Elite Eight appearance in 2020 before COVID-19 forced the cancellation of the remainder of the season.

For a program that’s been one of the best in Division III women’s basketball in the 21st century, there are plenty of banners on the Morrill Gymnasium walls. There’s one, though, that’s missing: A national championship banner, something Bowdoin has come within a game of three times but never secured.

“We have a couple seniors who were here the last time we were in the NCAA tournament,” Godfrey said. “We just keep talking about giving them new experiences and ending their senior year with, hopefully, a national championship and doing something that Bowdoin’s never done.”

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