Aiden Konold ’26
Chief Sports Editor
WORCESTER– A season ago, Lehigh ended the Holy Cross women’s basketball team’s season in Bethlehem, Pa. in the Patriot League Championship Semifinals. Today, the Crusaders exacted revenge not only for how their season ended last year, but also for the Holy Cross men’s basketball team, which lost on a beyond-halfcourt buzzer-beater against the No. 2 seeded Mountain Hawks in the 2026 Patriot League Men’s Basketball Quarterfinals.
All four of Holy Cross’s seniors scored in double figures en route to a 77-70 win over the No. 4 Mountain Hawks this afternoon. Simone Foreman, who tore the PCL in her right knee last season, made an immediate impact with five rebounds in the game’s first five minutes. Foreman totaled 16 points and 12 total rebounds for her fifth double-double of the season.
“For me, it’s very much a mental thing. In my head, I keep repeating [regarding my opponents], ‘You’re not gonna get the ball,’ ” Foreman said. “I take it very competitively, and for me, I knew that I had to show up for the game. In the first five minutes, I was like, ‘Okay, I made a mistake, how am I gonna get it back?’ And I knew with rebounds, that’s how I would.”
With 3:54 remaining in the first half, Foreman made a layup to put the Crusaders up 32-20, their largest lead of the game. But the Mountain Hawks closed the half on a 7-0 run to cut the Crusader lead to five, and quieted the once roaring home crowd. Lehigh’s run extended to 15-2 just under three minutes into the second half to give the Mountain Hawks their first lead since the 2:52 minute mark in the first quarter.
In a game that featured four ties and five lead changes, Holy Cross second-year head coach Candice Green relied on this year’s group of seniors to right the ship. Entering today’s championship game, Lehigh won its last six matchups against Holy Cross, but the Crusaders felt confident in the coaching staff’s gameplan and bought into the mission.
“Of all of our scouts, this is the one that I had the most confidence in all year and that’s how you want to feel going into the championship,” said Senior guard Kaitlyn Flanagan. “The things that we went over in practice and everybody buying in was what we needed, and it’s exactly what happened out on the court. Honestly, the only times that Lehigh was going on runs, was when we weren’t bought in that exact scout. And kudos to them [our coaches] for putting together a really good gameplan.”
A week after the Crusaders lost to Lehigh in last year’s playoffs, the team met to figure out the answer to one central question: what do we need to do to win?
When the season ended, Coach Green felt like she was to blame for her team falling short of a Patriot League Championship.
“Last year, I didn’t set a good enough tone,” Coach Green said. “It was kind of like, ‘Hey, let’s focus on everybody’s new role and how it’s gonna take time to develop that role,’ rather than being like, ‘Hey, you guys are ready, let’s go do it this year.’ ”
When the lead started to slip away in the third quarter, Coach Green told her team to stay disciplined. Earlier in the season, Coach Green noted how her team would go down by 15 and then decide to pressure, rather than doing so from the opening tipoff.
Though Coach Green did not like how her team wavered in their ball pressure down the stretch against Lehigh, the Crusaders closed the third quarter on a 20-13 run, and outscored the Mountain Hawks 23-22 in the final stanza to earn their spot in the 2026 NCAA Tournament.
“Obviously, we were doing our best trying to get students here, trying to get fans here, but honestly it wasn’t that hard,” said Senior Meg Cahalan. Everybody at Holy Cross wanted to come, they wanted to support us and in those moments when we went down, I knew that we had the crowd behind us, so it’s so much easier to rally and get the energy from the crowd when it’s sometimes hard to get it on the court.”
Cahalan joined Flanagan on the Patriot League All-Tournament team, and averaged 16 points, 4.3 rebounds, and three assists per game in the three tournament games played on Cousy Court.
Flanagan finished her final collegiate game on Cousy Court with 16 points and nine assists, and was named Tournament MVP for a stat line that included 11 points, six assists, 1.7 rebounds, and 1.3 blocks per game over her three games played in the Patriot League Tournament.
Junior Kendall Eddy added 10 points, with two three-pointers made, along with three rebounds and an assist in the win.
Several of the program’s alumni, including Grace Munt, Lauren Huber, and Lindsay Berger, who all graduated last spring, were in attendance at Cousy Court to watch their former teammates cut down the nets.
“We have had people in our exact positions that we were the ones looking up to… just watching them and the confidence that they had and the way that they just always played together [really helped us],” said Senior Mary-Elizabeth Donnelly. “We said it so many times before the game today, just stick together, just play together, no matter what happens, we’re together. And I feel like that’s definitely something that we took from them [the previous seniors] because they were a very close group and I feel like they really set the tone for our entire team. We took that a lot today, even throughout the whole season, knowing that the four of us help set the tone for everyone else, too, and the other three Juniors who play.”
Donnelly scored 12 points on five-for-10 shooting with five rebounds in the championship game.
The Crusaders improve to 23-9 on the season with a nine-game winning streak heading into the NCAA Tournament. They will travel to Ann Arbor, Mich. early this week as the No. 15 seed to take on the No. 2 seed Michigan Wolverines of the Big Ten. Tipoff is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. EST on Friday, March 20.
Featured image courtesy of the Worcester Telegram
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