![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/WBB-by-Alex-Dering-2-1-760x507.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Junior center Lexy Harris led the team in points in the loss to Oshkosh. (Alex Dering | Contributing Photographer)<\/p>\n
In the 2024-25 season, the WashU women\u2019s basketball team\u2019s year ended with an unceremonious defeat to the University of Chicago. In the 2025-26 campaign, however, the Bears exceeded preseason expectations and returned to the NCAA Tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After winning their first tournament games since 2019 in the first two rounds, the Bears were eliminated by the regional top-seeded University of Wisconsin\u2013Oshkosh 64-43 on March 13. While the Bears failed to win the national title, simply qualifying for and advancing in the tournament was a success for WashU.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI love this team,\u201d head coach Lisa Stone said. \u201cFrom my first year to this year, they committed to changing the culture. They worked on it through the summer, through Zoom calls, team building, and mental toughness. They met the moment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Throughout the contest, both teams played a largely defensive game. The Bears got off to an early lead with a slow Oshkosh start. The Bears, who led the University Athletic Association (UAA) in defensive rebounds, limited the Titans to just 4 points and a 13% shooting percentage in the first 10 minutes of play. By halftime, however, Oshkosh flipped the script, doubling the Bears\u2019 point total and burying the shots that it failed to hit in the first quarter. The Titans had a 22-19 lead at the break.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the first half, we played a really good defensive game,\u201d senior forward Jordan Rich said in a press conference after the game. \u201cEspecially in the first quarter, we held the floor. Our approach at halftime was to try and get back the lead, but every time we were scoring, they were coming right back in.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oshkosh took command of the game in the second half. WashU took a brief lead midway through the third quarter, but the Titans outscored the Bears 11-2 in the last five minutes of the quarter to solidify their advantage. The top-rated defensive squad in the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC), the Titans held WashU to 10 points in the final quarter. The Bears fell behind Oshkosh by 20 points, and the Titans pulled off a 64-43 win. WashU\u2019s 43 points were its lowest mark of the season, far below its average of 70 points per game.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the Elite Eight, Oshkosh defeated WashU\u2019s conference rival, Chicago, to advance to the Final Four.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOshkosh is a very, very good team,\u201d Stone said. \u201cThey\u2019re really solid, and they made it hard for us to score.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Bears\u2019 leading scorer, junior center Lexy Harris, recorded 12 points despite playing just 17 minutes in the loss. Junior forward Amelia Rosin led the team in rebounds with 8, and junior guard Sidney Rogers scored 9 points.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With a roster primarily constructed of juniors<\/a>, the Bears are poised to come back stronger next season. Harris, Rogers, Rosin, and junior guards Alyssa Hughes, Sydney Starks, and Catherine Goodwin will return next year, and WashU will look for an increase in production from sophomores like guard Ava Blagojevich.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rich, the team\u2019s lone senior, graduates after playing in nearly every game all four years of her career.<\/p>\n \u201cI just know that the next six [seniors] are going to step up in different ways and fill whatever I left,\u201d Rich said. \u201cBut there will be six people working with very different personalities, and I know that they will succeed in whatever roles they\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n The Bears won 21 games this season, their most in a single season since their Elite Eight run in 2019. They recorded key wins over ranked opponents such as Chicago<\/a>, Emory University<\/a>, and No. 13 Ohio Wesleyan University<\/a> in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Harris averaged 18.9 points per game and 9.1 rebounds per game, despite playing just 23.9 minutes per game on average. She was named to the D3Hoops.com All-Region XIII team<\/a> and a finalist for the Jostens Trophy<\/a>, awarded to the most outstanding Division III basketball player in the nation. Rogers and Hughes also averaged double-digit points per game throughout the season.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know our capabilities now that we\u2019ve made it this far,\u201d Harris said. \u201cSo I think that next year, we\u2019re not only going to make it back to the Sweet 16, but we\u2019re going to advance past this [round].\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Junior center Lexy Harris led the team in points in the loss to Oshkosh. (Alex Dering | Contributing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-545495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}