The Bulldogs are back. Some eight long months since their last game, the Samford women’s basketball team will take the court again.
On Sept. 17, the NCAA released the basketball schedule for the 2020 season which will tip off on Nov. 25.
Organizers pushed back the season two weeks later than the original start date due to the Coronavirus pandemic. The team is eager to be able to begin this season after the cancellation of its first NCAA tournament appearance since 2012. The Samford Bulldogs had earned the Southern Conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament after defeating UNC Greensboro at the Southern Conference tournament in March of this year.
With spirits high and players counting down the seconds on the clock, tip off could not come soon enough. Senior Raven Omar is particularly excited for the chance to pick things up from where the team left off from their championship.
“It’s a bittersweet moment just because, at the time we were just so excited and happy to have made history,” Omar said. “We won both the regular season title and the tournament title, so then getting it pulled away from us was just heartbreaking.”
Omar expressed that even though they didn’t get to finish the season in the way they had originally been supposed to, she is still proud of the accomplishments her team achieved and what it means for the program moving forward.
The team was willing and eager to comply with whatever choice the NCAA made in regard to season scheduling. With NCAA fall sports such as football, soccer, volleyball and several others being moved to the spring of 2021, some members of the team had speculated on what might happen to their own schedule.
“Of course you know you have the thought that it probably might push back even further due to everybody else’s season,” Omar said. “You know, the fall sports, them getting pushed back, whatever their decision was going to be, we are going to take it and run with it.”
This optimistic attitude made the news of an only two week delay even more exciting to hear. The team is looking forward to defending its Southern Conference title with another great season at the Pete Hanna Center.
