On Wednesday, March 26th, 2025 the Lady Bulldogs’ season came to a valiant end after a hard fought loss to California State University Dominguez Hills, 68-50 in the NCAA DII Final Four round. The tournament took place in Pittsburgh, PA, where the Lady Bulldogs upset 2-seed Bentley University in the Elite Eight round of the tournament two days prior, but the journey ended on Wednesday in the semifinal.
The Lady Bulldogs ended the season with a record of 33-4 (24-1 in conference play). They won the GSC conference and continued on to win the regional tournament. This would be the second time that the Lady Bulldogs have made it to the Elite Eight since 2018.
The record is impressive, but the season was a journey with ups and downs which required resilience and growth from the players and coaching staff to get to where they got.
Shylee Morrison, senior accounting major, recalled a time after Christmas when the team was struggling.
“I remember a really low moment was at Delta State, we were just like, ‘we don’t even know how to fix it, where do we go from here.’ But after that we started gradually going up,” Morrison said. “I think Coach Sean [Blackburn] had a big part of this, kind of breaking it down a little differently. Some people are different learners, and so breaking it down in different ways helped.”
Brooke Hampel, graduate assistant for the basketball team, noticed that change as well.
“Like you may look at the record and think, ‘oh, they won a whole bunch of games,’ but a lot of those were games that the girls knew they weren’t playing their best. So I would say that in the team, I saw a willingness to take what the coaches were saying to heart and improve and get better,” Hampel said.
Hampel’s role on the team as the graduate assistant was not simply just as she describe “director of operations,” but also to be an open-door for the Lady Bulldogs to have someone to talk to. She would regularly spend time in the locker room before practice with players.
“I always have to be ready because you never know what’s going on in somebody’s life or how they’re feeling about life or how they’re feeling about basketball,” Hampel said.
“Emotions are complex.”
Mark Campbell, 26th year head coach of the Lady Bulldogs, is all about the details and being aware of them. He feels that the details are what’s most important when it comes to the strategy of his team, doing the little things right. But he also makes sure that the Lady Bulldogs operate well as a unit, with cohesiveness and trust so that his players can rely on each other. This season, that reliance and cohesiveness grew greatly and led the Lady Bulldogs deep into the NCAA DII tournament. With this coaching along with supporting help from Hampel and assistant coach Sean Blackburn, the Lady Bulldogs were able to excel both in basketball but also relationally as a team.
“I think this season compared to all previous season was by far my favorite, just because of the people who were on it,” Morrison said. “Once it finally clicked it was a great season, everyone enjoyed each other, and the basketball was working, and that was really special.”
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