Basketball Greats Remember Titles, Sweet 16 Run
Beaver grads invited to return on Feb. 3 for Alumni Basketball Day
Buena Vista University celebrates Alumni Basketball Day on Saturday, Feb. 3, with an alumni men’s basketball scrimmage, a recognition of all former players in attendance, games for children, and lunch. The Beaver men’s and women’s basketball teams host the University of Dubuque with the women tipping off at 2 p.m. in Siebens Fieldhouse.
Special recognition on that day highlights three teams which celebrate special anniversaries of 50 years and 20 years.
• The 1974 women’s basketball team, which won the Io-Kota Conference Championship, representing the Beavers first league title in women’s basketball.
• The 2004 men’s team, which won the Iowa Conference regular season and post-season league tournament.
• And, the 2004 women’s team, which claimed the Iowa Conference Regular Season crown, the Iowa Conference Tournament, and earned triumphs in two national tournament games to advance to the NCAA Division III Women’s Basketball Sweet 16.
“We were behind by six points with three minutes left and made a comeback. One of our players hit a shot to tie the game and we rode the energy of the crowd the rest of the way.”
-Coach Janet Berry
A little more about that 2003-04 women’s team, which earned a pair of league titles and a Sweet 16 berth, the program’s third.
The 2003-04 storybook season concluded at the Sweet 16 at Thomas More University in Crestview Hills, Kent. The Beavers fell to Puget Sound, 70-66, to finish with a sterling record of 27-3. The team earned the Sweet 16 berth by defeating No. 13-ranked Carleton College in a game before a packed gymnasium at Siebens Fieldhouse.
“As I’m describing the crowd to you now, 20 years later, I’m getting chills,” said former Head Coach Janet Berry. “We were behind by six points with three minutes left and made a comeback. One of our players hit a shot to tie the game and we rode the energy of the crowd the rest of the way.”
“I remember how packed the gym was, it was incredible,” said Amy (Meggers) Divis ’04, a paralegal who resides with her family at Crete, Neb. “It was so much fun.”
Kelli Taylor-Noble, a 2004 graduate who earned a BVU master’s degree three years later, was also a senior, and, like Divis, had contributed on the court throughout her four seasons.
“There were so many things that came together during our time,” said Taylor-Noble, a Vice President who serves State Farm and resides with her family at Athens, Ga. “Players on the team connected in the offseason. Each year, our practices became more intense. By our senior year, we had everyone on the team being unselfish and embracing their roles.”
Divis and Katie (Maguire) Campbell ’06 earned First Team All-IIAC accolades that season, while Divis, who averaged 20.4 points per game, was the IIAC’s Most Valuable Player and an All-American. Taylor-Noble and Kristina (Kapler) Robinson ’05 were Second Team All-Conference picks. The team lost just one time in league games. (BVU then went 16-0 in the conference the following year to close out a 31-1 run of dominance in two years.)
“I remember the Central game late in the regular season in 2004,” said Berry, who earned Iowa Conference Coach of the Year honors that season. “I didn’t talk about this with our players, but I knew it had been a few years since we had won the conference. Getting over the hump in a physical low-scoring game (63-62) against Central was a huge relief. It showed we could do it.”
After the starting lineups were announced for the conference tournament championship game, the players returned to Berry in the huddle. Two decades later, Taylor-Noble still remembers how there were no "secret sauces" to Berry’s calm pregame instruction that night: “Coach said, ‘We know what we need to do. Everyone here knows what we need to do to win.’”
That season, they did a lot of it. And made memories they’ll continue to share for a lifetime.
Said Divis: “Some of the best memories of my life came with that team.”