Season: 18-8 (7-3), lost to Amherst in NESCAC Semifinals
The big question for Bowdoin coming into the season was how they would deal with the loss of three perimeter contributors: Matt Mathias ’14, Grant White ’14, and Andrew Madlinger ’14. The Polar Bears looked like they were in trouble with three losses in December by double digits while playing the same opening schedule against whom Bowdoin went 12-0 a year ago. Things looked even worse when the team learned halfway through January that Keegan Pieri ’15, the team’s second leading scorer and rebounder at that point, was out for the season. Though the team was 3-1 in the conference at that point, they still had their toughest opponents in front of them. An 0-2 weekend soon afterward brought Bowdoin to 4-3 and seemed to confirm that the Polar Bears were in trouble.
Then the team ripped off three wins at home to finish out the conference season. This sudden surge was due to a couple of things. First, after Pieri’s injury, Lucas Hausman ’16 morphed into something close to a facsimile of 2006 Finals Dwyane Wade. The junior twisted his way through defenses to give the offense new life. Meanwhile, John Swords ’15 returned to the same offensive form we saw last season and started to punish defenses inside. Combined with the same stingy defense as always and steady point guard play from Bryan Hurley ’15, Bowdoin rose all the way to the #2 seed. In the quarterfinals they took care of business against an always dangerous Williams team behind 37 from Hausman and 23 from Swords. Then in the semifinals Bowdoin could not contain Jeff Racy ’17 or Jayde Dawson ’18 off the bench, and the Lord Jeffs rolled to the win. The Polar Bears ended up having one or two too many non-conference losses and missed out the tournament by likely only a couple of spots.
High Point: 98-70 home victory over Bates Friday, February 13
Bowdoin got blown out in the second half in the first meeting between these two teams in December, but the script could not have been any more different for this one. In front of an unusually loud home crowd, Bowdoin played a near perfect offensive game shooting 63.5 percent from the field (12-18 from three) with 27 assists as a team. The star was Hausman who went 20-25 from the field on his way to tying the school record with 44 points. Bates could not figure out how to attack the Bowdoin zone and settled for a lot of outside shots, finishing the game with less than 10 baskets inside the arc. Hurley finished the game with 15 points and 12 assists while Matt Palecki ’16 and Swords both finished with more than 10 points. The win was followed up with a close victory over Tufts that sealed a home game for the Polar Bears in the NESCAC tournament.
MVP: Shooting Guard Lucas Hausman ’16
The most important thing to know about Hausman is that he is a natural born scorer. He finished his high school career with 1750 points. For his first two seasons, he came off the bench behind Madlinger and Mathias, but his scoring ability was always evident as he scored 22.0 points per 40 minutes in 2013-2014. Still, it was not until about halfway through the season when Hausman really turned into a terror for opposing defenses. His conference numbers are silly. He scored 24.7 PPG in conference play, and if you throw in the 58 points he scored in the two tournament games, that rises to 25.4 PPG. His 24.7 PPG is the highest average in conference games since the 2003-2004 season when Keala Mills scored 25.2 PPG for Wesleyan. He became almost impossible to stop in isolation situations because of his ability to score in so many ways. Hausman will be back next season with teams fully focused on stopping him.
Player to Watch: Forward Neil Fuller ’17
Replacing Swords and Hurley (not to mention Pieri) will be very tall tasks for an already thin Bowdoin roster, but the Polar Bears should benefit from getting a full season in 2015-2016 from Fuller. His season was essentially wiped out with a leg injury that kept him out for nearly two months. Though he returned at the end of the season, he was clearly rusty from not being able to play for so long. Fuller will likely pair with Palecki in a revamped frontcourt that will look very different without the 7’0″ presence of Swords out there. One advantage that Fuller does bring is that he is capable of hitting mid-range jumpers which should help keep driving lanes open for Hausman. On defense Fuller is obviously not capable of having the impact that Swords did, but he works hard to get in position and does a good job altering shots. With Fuller, Palecki, and Jack Hewitt ’17, the Polar Bears should be OK up front.