Thursday, Oct. 2, both William and Mary basketball programs sent representatives to the Coastal Athletic Association Media Day to preview the upcoming season. Junior guard Cassidy Geddes joined women’s head coach Erin Dickerson Davis, and senior guard Chase Lowe joined men’s head coach Brian Earl. The women were picked to finish sixth in the conference, while the men were picked to finish fourth.
Last year, the women posted a record of 16-19 (8-10 CAA), but their middling winning percentage was forgotten as they stormed to an improbable conference championship. After losing seven of its final eight regular-season games, the Tribe arrived at the CAA tournament as a No. 9 seed and pulled upset after upset, streaking through the bracket and securing the first March Madness berth for either basketball program.
The magic didn’t stop there: William and Mary defeated High Point in the First Four to set up a date with Texas on its home court. Although the top-seeded Longhorns brought an end to the Green and Gold’s campaign, the Tribe turned in one of the most memorable stretches in William and Mary athletics history. According to Dickerson Davis, she was swarmed by teary-eyed alumni throughout March and beyond.
“It was tears of pride,” Dickerson Davis said. “You know, being able to say that we put William and Mary on this national map, right? People that were alums that had no ties to athletics were showing up to [Texas] wearing green and gold, you know. So I just think that the best part for me, the only part that I can really put into words, is that the pride that everybody felt is something that I will never forget from that moment.”
However, many of William and Mary’s most notable players have departed, including six seniors. Bella Nascimento, the star guard who averaged nearly 20 points per game during the Tribe’s Cinderella run, graduated, as did defensive stalwart Anahi-Lee Cauley. Third-leading scorer Kayla Rolph transferred to Boston College.
Much of the team’s leadership duties now lie on the shoulders of senior guard Alexa Mikeska, the lone senior on the Green and Gold’s roster, junior guard Monet Dance and Geddes, a preseason All-CAA selection who was the Tribe’s second-leading scorer last year. Dickerson Davis raved about Geddes’ work ethic and identified the guard as a player capable of unlocking William and Mary’s full potential.
“She has worked all summer long on her game, but I think what I’m most impressed with is how she is growing as a leader,” Dickerson Davis said. “She knows what leadership should look like on a basketball team. She’s seen great ones. She’s seen leadership that wasn’t as good as it could have been, and I think she’s just taken all of that information — I mean she’s brilliant, so she’s a researcher, right — and she’s taking all of this information, and she reads books, articles, sends me things that she’s learning in class, and then she just finds a way to translate that to the basketball court.”
Counterintuitively, William and Mary’s first order of business is putting the CAA title in the rear-view mirror. The Tribe will host a banner-raising ceremony Oct. 18 in Kaplan Arena, celebrating its championship for the last time. It will then proceed to “turn the page,” in the words of Geddes. The Green and Gold hopes to defend its championship, but it’s currently focused on building chemistry rather than looking ahead to next March, Dickerson Davis said.
According to Geddes, the transition has gone smoothly because the Tribe’s new faces know what the program is capable of.
“I think it’s also helped that all of our newcomers that have come in, they watched [the CAA title],” Geddes said. “They experienced it from the outside, and so we were able to kind of feed into that hunger to get it for them, for them to go and experience that. So I mean, it’s really just been a seamless transition into the motivation for this year.”
Although she’s confident in her group, Dickerson Davis is aware of its youth and designed William and Mary’s non-conference schedule with the team’s inexperience in mind. Last year’s squad entered CAA play sporting a 3-8 record and reeling from a 50-point loss to Maryland. Wanting to avoid a similar outcome, Dickerson Davis scheduled slightly weaker opponents with a focus on preparing the Tribe for the conference slate.
“We wanted to make sure that they were still being tested by really great teams but that they didn’t feel demoralized by some of these teams that we were playing and not be able to bounce out of that,” Dickerson Davis said. “So when we were building our schedule, it was like, ‘Okay, we’re going to play Richmond, and this reminds us of Drexel. We’re going to play this team, it reminds us of [North Carolina] A&T.’”
Nevertheless, Dickerson Davis doesn’t believe the Tribe’s lack of seniors will hold it back and is optimistic about the way the roster is gelling.
“I think that some people will look at our youth and inexperience kind of as a negative, and I think that it’s a positive,” Dickerson Davis said. “I think that this group has really come in ready to go. They watched our championship run, the young players that we have, the transfers that we have, they watched it, and they saw what it looked like. Then you have returners that felt it, and so I think just seeing it come all together and come into fruition — I think it’s going to be really cool.”
The women begin their title defense on the road, traveling to Davidson, N.C., to take on Davidson at John M. Belk Arena Thursday, Nov. 6.
In Earl’s first season with the men’s program after coming over from Cornell in March 2024, the Tribe posted its best result since the 2019-2020 campaign, winning 17 games, putting up a sparkling 12-2 record at Kaplan Arena and going 11-7 in CAA play. Although William and Mary’s stellar year ended with an uninspiring 22-point loss to Delaware during the first round of the conference tournament, Earl’s debut was a resounding success — the Tribe’s attendance numbers were the highest they’ve been since COVID.
Similar to the women’s team, the men’s team looks to capitalize on last season’s momentum with an unfamiliar cast of characters. All-CAA second-teamer Gabe Dorsey, the Tribe’s leading scorer and one of the conference’s most prolific three-point shooters, has graduated, as have productive veterans Matteus Case, Keller Boothby, Caleb Dorsey and Malachi Ndur. Second-leading scorer Noah Collier and CAA All-Rookie honoree Isaiah Mbeng entered the transfer portal over the offseason. Eight new faces grace William and Mary’s roster.
During the 2024-2025 campaign, William and Mary rode Earl’s trademark high-octane style to success, ranking third among Division I teams in three-pointers attempted per field goal attempt, third in average offensive possession length and 18th in raw tempo. According to Earl, the process by which he installs his system can be overwhelming — the Tribe’s practices are often “unorthodox,” with “balls flying all over the place” and newcomers looking at each other in confusion.
It is for this reason that Earl believes that returning players like Lowe and senior guard Kyle Pulliam will significantly help the program as it transitions between rosters. Last season, the only Tribe player familiar with Earl’s style was Boothby, who followed the coach from Cornell to William and Mary. Now, despite its many departures, the team possesses multiple veterans who can show its incoming transfers the ropes.
“I think a lot of [Lowe and Pulliam’s job] will be them explaining to the team what exactly we’re looking for, believing in what we’re doing, stick[ing] with it, and that’s even more important now that a lot of teams are starting over each year,” Earl said.
Earl expects William and Mary to play similarly to the way it did last season. However, he said the idea that the Tribe wants to maximize tempo and three-point volume at all times is a misconception. Earl pointed out that his squad “spent a lot of time on defense” last year — its average defensive possession length was 18.8 seconds, the eighth-highest mark among Division I teams. The Tribe coach also said the number of triples attempted by his squad will be determined by player preferences.
“I am not pounding the desk saying, ‘Shoot more threes,’” Earl said. “And so, I’m into scoring and stopping the other team from scoring, and so, if we can be the best two-point shooting team in the country, shooting the most two-pointers, we’ll take it.”
Thus, fans shouldn’t expect Lowe and Pulliam, preseason All-CAA selections who are projected to be William and Mary’s leading scorers, to shoot triples at the same rate as Gabe Dorsey, who led the league in three-point percentage last season while ranking fourth in attempts. His production, as well as the production of the other departed players, will be replaced by committee, Earl said. William and Mary won’t try to fit its new-look roster into the blueprint established by the 2024-2025 roster. Rather, it will modify the blueprint to suit its specialties.
“I don’t know if we’re going to have somebody [like Gabe],” Earl said. “I think Gabe hit over 90 [threes], so it’ll probably be by committee, and so we’re not exactly looking for one guy to make up that difference. I think it’s going to be multiple guys, some names you’ve heard of [that] hit some last year that we’re trying to get maybe ten or so more out of, and then a few new guys who maybe are more willing shooters than guys we had last year. Chase has been shooting them. So, you know, if you make them at a good rate, we’re okay with you shooting them.”
Lowe, who has been with William and Mary since 2022, had never seen the Tribe projected to finish better than seventh in the CAA before this year. According to the senior, William and Mary’s fourth-place preseason rank represents the program’s growth, but the team won’t be satisfied until it’s on top of the league.
“I think it says that the program is moving in the right direction,” Lowe said. “As I said before, we have a lot of retention, we have a lot of guys coming back, we have some strong transfers coming into the program, I think they’re going to help us out a lot this year. You know, I’m glad that we were picked fourth in the CAA, but we all know the goal is to be number one and win the whole thing.”
The men tip off Monday, Nov. 3, taking on Division II Georgian Court at Kaplan Arena in Williamsburg, Va.
