At the turn of the year, it was difficult to imagine William and Mary women’s basketball (8-8, 1-4 CAA) losing a single game, let alone multiple.
After starting the season 1-4, the Tribe went on a run reminiscent of the hot streak that carried it to the 2025 Coastal Athletic Association title, rattling off seven consecutive wins while playing almost exclusively on the road. From November 29 to January 2, William and Mary beat four teams by double digits and picked up six victories away from Kaplan Arena, including a triumphant defeat of Atlantic Coast Conference foe Wake Forest (12-8, 2-6 ACC) that marked the program’s first win over a Power Four opponent in ten years.
William and Mary’s run of good form continued into its conference opener, during which the Tribe throttled North Carolina Agricultural and Technical (7-9, 2-3 CAA) 60-49. Fast forward two weeks, and the Green and Gold sits at the bottom of the league leaderboard, having fallen against four consecutive CAA opponents. What happened?
“I don’t really have much,” William and Mary head coach Erin Dickerson Davis said Friday, Jan. 16, after the Tribe’s most recent loss, a 59-49 home defeat at the hands of Hampton (8-9, 2-3 CAA). “We luckily have a bye coming up on Sunday so that we can get healthy first and foremost, but also kind of get back to the drawing boards on what we need to do to get this turned around.”
The Tribe’s losing streak began with three heartbreakers: an overtime collapse against Stony Brook (10-9, 5-1 CAA), a two-point loss to Charleston (14-3, 6-0 CAA), and another two-point loss, this time against Campbell (11-8, 4-2 CAA). However, William and Mary was never wholly outclassed, never out of striking distance down the home stretch — until Friday, that is.
After coming out of the gates hot, claiming a sizable early advantage against a Hampton team that had lost five of its last six, William and Mary gave up a 39-12 run and did not get within 10 points of the Pirates after halftime. During the second and third quarters, the Tribe was outscored by a combined margin of 30-15; in the second half, the Green and Gold connected on just two of its 14 three-point attempts.
“Typically, Hampton starts slow, and they kind of speed up,” Dickerson Davis said. “I think that when we got up, we kind of took our foot off the gas.”
The game’s outcome was not in doubt as the clock ran down on Hampton’s first victory over William and Mary since 2021.
Before the season, Dickerson Davis and junior guard Cassidy Geddes made clear that the primary purpose of William and Mary’s non-conference slate would be to prepare the Tribe’s inexperienced, underclassman-laden roster for the rigors of CAA competition. Aiming to avoid a repeat of the 2024-2025 campaign, during which the Green and Gold stumbled into league play sporting a 3-8 record and reeling from a 50-point loss to Maryland, Dickerson Davis intentionally scheduled slightly weaker opponents with playstyles resembling those of William and Mary’s conference foes.
By all appearances, this strategy paid dividends: the Tribe entered CAA play with a winning record, a strong résumé, and much more confidence than it sported at the beginning of 2025. Why, then, has William and Mary struggled in the early going?
Dickerson Davis’ theory: her squad doesn’t fully grasp the weight of the target on its back.
“What I keep trying to get my team to understand is that we won a championship last year,” Dickerson Davis said. “Like, nobody is looking at us like we’re not a good basketball team. Even with our injuries, and, you know, [senior guard] Alexa [Mikeska] didn’t practice yesterday. Like, we’re banged up. So even with all of that, people are looking at us like we’re a good team. And so we have to be prepared to get everybody’s best, and I think that’s just where we’re struggling right now, is we want to be the underdog, and we’re just not. We’re just not.”
Charleston, Campbell and Stony Brook all dwell in the upper half of the league standings, but Hampton is just 2-3 in CAA play and was picked to finish 11th in the conference’s preseason media poll. Nevertheless, William and Mary was unable to withstand a motivated Pirates squad, which used 44 combined points from junior guards Kiarra McElrath and Kayla Lezama to knock off the 2025 CAA champions.
The Tribe is also short-handed, with several key pieces battling through injury: junior center Tika Sallman, one of William and Mary’s most efficient offensive players, has not seen the court since Jan. 4, freshman guard Dynasti Pierce hasn’t played since Jan. 9 and Mikeska is banged up. Against Stony Brook, Charleston and Hampton, four Green and Gold starters played 30 or more minutes in marathon efforts. Six off-days lie between William and Mary’s loss to Hampton and its Friday, Jan. 23 trip to Northeastern (6-10, 2-4 CAA), a period of downtime Dickerson Davis says will be crucial in recuperating players.
However, William and Mary won’t make much progress until it eliminates the execution mistakes Dickerson Davis says plague the Tribe. As Hampton started to pull away from the Green and Gold, the Pirates began deploying a zone that the hosts struggled to navigate: in the second half, just 17.2% of William and Mary’s shot attempts came at the rim compared to 51.7% in the first half. According to Dickerson Davis, the Tribe’s failure to generate quality interior looks was mostly self-inflicted.
“I think [Hampton] went zone against us,” Dickerson Davis said. “I don’t think it was a great zone. I think that we started off missing a couple layups that we got. I think that we were trying to get the ball in the net, but we weren’t making the correct pass, even though we practice it every single day.”
Dickerson Davis was also dissatisfied with her squad’s defense of Lezama, who averaged 14.4 points per game coming into the contest and dropped 23 points against the Tribe on 50% three-point shooting.
“At some point, like, we just have to do our jobs,” Dickerson Davis said. “I guess that’s probably my biggest frustration right now, is we talk about executing things in the way that it was coached, and we’re not, right. And so whatever that — I don’t know — that divide is between what we’re trying to get them to do and them actually doing it is, I think, where we need to figure out.”
William and Mary will attempt to recover its injured players, clean up its mistakes, and get back in the win column against Northeastern at the Cabot Center in Boston, Mass. The matchup is on the road, perhaps a welcome change for a Tribe team that is 2-5 in home games and 5-3 in away games.
“I’m sorry to all of our Tribe fans that support us every day that we don’t play as well at home,” Dickerson Davis said. “So luckily, we’re on the road. We can get some things rolling, but it’s really going to depend on if we can get healthy.”
