A key philosophy for William & Mary women’s basketball coach Erin Dickerson Davis and her staff is “play next.”
They write it on the board in the locker room, reminding players not to dwell on the past but learn from it, especially the mistakes and losses.
“That might be next possession. That might mean get to the next quarter. It might mean get to the next half. We had to have a ‘play next’ mentality,” Davis said after her team’s 76-65 victory over Hofstra on Thursday in the second round of the Coastal Athletic Association tournament at CareFirst Arena.
That approach was particularly handy against the Pride, who just 11 days prior beat the Tribe by 20 points on senior day at Kaplan Arena, holding the hosts to 34 points in their lowest output of the season.
“We learned from that. We watched it. We tossed it,” said Davis, who is in her third season with the Tribe.
And because the Tribe (12-18 and the ninth seed in the tournament) did, they now play next in Friday’s quarterfinals against North Carolina A&T, the top seed.
Senior guard Bella Nascimento, a second-team all-CAA selection, was the epitome of W&M’s “play next” mentality. She led the Tribe with 17 points, five assists and three rebounds.
In the Tribe’s loss to the Pride on March 2, Nascimento was 2 for 19 from the field for four points, her second-lowest output of the season. She then missed her first three shots Thursday, but kept shooting.
“It’s just a confidence thing,” she said. “I believe in myself and in my teammates to keep getting me the ball and they know that I can shoot that 3 and they have confidence in me. So, with that confidence, it’s going up and going in every single time. Even if I miss, I’m shooting the next one and I know it’s going in.”
She had plenty of support, though. Monet Dance, a sophomore guard, had 12 points, a team-high eight rebounds, three assists and three steals; junior forward Kayla Rolph added 11 points, eight in the first quarter; and freshman forward Natalie Fox had nine points and six rebounds.
For the No.8 Pride (14-16), junior guards Alarice Gooden (18) and Emma Von Essen (13) combined for 31 points, nearly half the team’s total. Janaia Fargo, a senior guard, added 11 points, and LaNae’ Corbett, a forward who made the all-rookie team, had 10. Chloe Sterling, a junior guard who played two years at James Madison and was Hofstra’s leading scorer at 13.0 points per game, was lost for the season in early February because of a knee injury.

The game featured teams headed in opposite directions. After an overtime win at Hampton on Feb. 9, the Tribe were 7-3 in the conference and had a top-four seed in their grasp. Included in that stretch was a five-game winning streak. But W&M finished the regular season losing seven of eight, including a four-game slide, and dropped to the No. 9 seed with an 8-10 record.
Hofstra, meanwhile, entered the tournament as one of the hottest teams in the league, finishing the conference season on a five-game winning streak and a 9-9 mark.
“We knew that this is playoff season. Everybody is zero-zero. Everybody’s in it to win it. Everybody’s going to fight. Everyone is going to chip in,” Nascimento said. “But it’s all about grit, passion and heart, and that’s what our team brought today. That’s what our mentality was, was to get after it.”
Davis was proud of her team.
“I think this is one of the most together we’ve been all season,” she said.
Unlike their regular-season matchup, when they never scored more than 10 points in a quarter, the Tribe got after it from the start. Hofstra opened the scoring 32 seconds in, but the Tribe responded with an 8-2 run. Rolph sandwiched a pair of 3-pointers around two free throws from Dance. After Hofstra tied it at 8, the Tribe closed the quarter on a 10-4 run for an 18-12 lead.
“We started the game really well,” Davis said, noting in their previous matchup, the Tribe led 8-7 after the first quarter. “So, for us to be able to score 18 in that first quarter and get some stops … that gave us confidence to then go into the second quarter, even though they scored more than us that quarter.”
A fastbreak layup from Nascimento to start the second quarter stretched the Tribe’s lead to eight, but the Pride scored the next nine points for a 21-20 lead on an inside shot by Corbett. No one led by more than three points the rest of the quarter, which featured one tie and six lead changes.
Nascimento’s 3-pointer with seven seconds left in the half put the Tribe ahead to stay and gave them more points (36) in first 20 minutes than they had in their regular-season loss to the Pride.
“Senior night is a really hard time to play, right?” Davis said of that defeat, which was their final home game of the season.
She noted the Tribe were graduating six players, five of whom started that game. In addition, it was the first game against Hofstra since the Pride knocked the Tribe out of the CAA tournament in 2024, when W&M was the fifth seed and Hofstra the 12th. (The teams also met in the 2023 tournament, with the No.4 Tribe beating No.12 Hofstra.)
“Our team put a lot of pressure on themselves to win. They really, really wanted it,” Davis said of the regular-season matchup. “There is such a thing as trying too hard. Everyone was trying to do it on their own in our first game. We realized that we can’t do it that way. There was a lot of one-on-one, which is why we only scored 34 points. We hadn’t had struggles like that all season.”
As with the first quarter, the Tribe came out strong in the third quarter, taking a 48-40 lead at the 6:20 mark. After the Pride cut it to five, Rebekah Frisby-Smith (8 points) and Dance hit 3-pointers 32 seconds apart for an 11-point cushion. The teams traded 3-pointers in the final 48 seconds of the quarter, with Cassidy Geddes (7 points) banking in a 3-pointer from the right wing for the Tribe, who had gone on a 24-13 run since Hofstra tied the game at 33 late in the second quarter.
In the locker room at halftime, Davis and her staff stressed winning the first five minutes after the break.
“We knew that was a very important thing for us. Same thing when we started the game,” Davis said.
“We always say try to get them to call the first timeout. If we can do that, the bench erupts, everybody is in it. Everybody is locked in. It gives you more confidence and so that is what we did.”
The Tribe outscored the Pride 21-13 in the third quarter, shooting 47.1 percent from the field (8-17), including 44.4 percent on 3-pointers (4 for 9).
“They hit shots,” said Hofstra coach Danielle Santos Atkinson, adding her team’s four turnovers in the quarter also hurt.
The Pride were 5 for 11 (45.5 percent) in the third quarter, including 3 of 4 on 3-pointers.
“On the offensive side of things, I did think we were clicking. It’s just they shot at 47 percent as well,” Atkinson said. “Once they got that momentum, it was tough. Once they hit a few of those 3s, started feeling it, the rim got bigger and bigger.”
The Tribe gradually increased their lead in the fourth quarter, stretching it to 18 by the 4:01 mark. It stayed in double digits until 41 seconds remained in the game, but Dance closed the scoring with a pair of free throws with 18 seconds left.
In addition to strong shooting in the second half (48.4 percent as opposed to 41.7 in the first half), the Tribe outrebounded the Pride 22-11 in the final two quarters after being outrebounded by one in the first half.
“That was an emphasis for us the entire week. We spent over half our practices just doing box out and rebounding drills,” Davis said. “Rebounding has been an Achilles’ heel since I’ve been here. I’d love to say it’s height that matters, it’s not. You have to have the will to go get the ball.”
Following the devasting home loss to Hofstra, W&M closed the regular season with lopsided losses at N.C. A&T and Campbell. However, those losses prepared the Tribe for the CAA tournament.
“It was buying in,” Davis said. “It was buying into what works, buying into what worked all season to help us score the basketball and then buying in to each other.”
North Carolina A&T won both regular-season matchups against the Tribe by an average of 24 points. Nascimento and Davis know the “play next” mentality, again, will be key.
“To beat A&T, it’s going to be a whole team effort,” Nascimento said. “Ultimately, we have to stick together and play together. When we’re together, nobody can stop us.”
Said Davis: “For me, you have to come ready to compete. This is a league for the past two seasons where the one seed has not won the tournament. If I know Coach (Tarrell) Robinson, I know that he is going to try to change that tomorrow.”
She expects the Aggies will be excited for their first tournament game, so matching their energy and intensity from the tip is important.
“I think if we start the game that way, it’ll give us confidence as we continue through the game,” she said.