How George Mason won its first Atlantic 10 title to advance to first NCAA Tournament

The team didn’t care that they weren’t cheering under the fall of the confetti (but the operators soon moved the confetti cannons closer to the celebration). Eventually, a second round of confetti showered the team in tiny pieces of red and black as head coach Vanessa Blair-Lewis held its ticket to March Madness above her head. 

The No. 2 seed Patriots defeated No. 4 seed Saint Joseph’s 73-58 on Sunday to earn their first Atlantic 10 Tournament title and the program’s first NCAA Tournament berth. 

George Mason won three games in three days, all by at least 13 points, and had three players earn All-Championship team honors: graduate student forward Nalani Kaysia; senior guard Paula Suárez; and Most Outstanding Player, redshirt sophomore forward Zahirah Walton. 

Suárez led the team with 23 points Sunday afternoon, making nine of her 16 shot attempts, and added six rebounds, six assists and one steal in front of her parents, who came from Spain to watch their daughter. 

“I love when they get to come here and see us play, because they always watch through a TV…” she said. “But like, being here, they love the atmosphere. They love that there’s people driving from Mason to [be] here. So I’m just really happy they got the opportunity to see this in person.”

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Three other Patriots scored in double figures: Walton recorded 19 points, eight rebounds, two assists and one block; Kaysia had 11 points, eight rebounds, two assists and one block; and sophomore guard Kennedy Harris had 11 points, two rebounds and two steals. 

While Saint Joseph’s hit the first basket, George Mason led the game for 36:06 and by as many as 19 in the fourth quarter. The lead was built in part by the team going 10-for-11 from the floor during the third quarter. 

Though the Patriots did not make a field goal in the last 4:28 of the game, they were able to withstand the Hawks’ run and went 9-for-12 from the free throw line after Saint Joseph’s pulled within 6 points with 1:26 to go. 

As the celebration continued, the net-cutting process was a smooth one until the final player, Kaysia, broke the scissors with her first cut. After she got a working pair of scissors and made a successful snip, she made sure to keep the piece close to her, tying it around the closure of her championship hat that she wore backwards to the postgame press conference. 

As her teammates were celebrating in a huddle under cameras, Kaysia ran to the stands to see her loved ones and grab her 10-month-old daughter Xéla so they could celebrate together. Xéla eventually joined her mom at the press conference, wearing a black sweatshirt with the George Mason logo and her mom’s number 42 on it. 

Though Xéla spent most of the press conference playing with the ceremonial ring box, trying to grab the microphone, or occasionally banging on the table and trying to add her own commentary, Kaysia looks forward to telling her daughter about this moment in the future. 

“Does she know what’s going on right now? Absolutely not,” Kaysia told reporters after the team’s semifinal win on March 8. “But she’s just happy that everyone around her is happy. And I can’t wait ’til she gets older, and then kind of processes and knows what’s going on. And then, not only just me, but for my teammates too, for her to say, like, ‘Oh, my mommy and all my aunties were able to accomplish this.’”

Before Blair-Lewis finally cut down the remainder of the net, she encouraged the crowd of fans and members of the Green Machine to cheer louder, standing barefoot on the ladder, scissors in hand. After removing the net from the hoop, she held it in her hand and yelled, “Let’s go” and “We did it.”

To win the championship, George Mason had to defeat Saint Joseph’s for the first time this season after losing the two regular-season matchups. The second regular-season loss was on Feb. 23 and was the team’s second in a row after losing to Davidson on Feb. 20. 

“I think it was a really good wake-up call for us before we got into the tournament, to have back-to-back losses, which was unprecedented for this team,” Blair-Lewis told reporters after the semifinal win on March 8. “It really woke us up. We really had some conversations, watched some film and then we had a pizza party. And we just took the pressure off of ’em. 

“We were sitting around here sad because we were 23-5 at the time, and we were looking around like, ‘Oh, woe is me.’ And we’re like, ‘Hey, wait a minute. Stop this. We’re 23-5. Like there are a ton of people that would want to change positions with us right now. We hit a little dead spot, and if we want to, we don’t have to lose again, y’all. Let’s take this moment right here [and] learn from it.’ And then we literally went and had a pizza party.”

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Blair-Lewis knew the team didn’t lose to Saint Joseph’s twice because it wasn’t talented enough. It was because the team didn’t have “the heart in those games to win” and was outworked. 

“So today was about being faithful with 40. For 40 minutes, let’s be faithful with the 40 [minutes],” she said. “That means every loose ball, every rebound … everything we have to do to beat this team, we have to do it. And we have to be faithful. 

“Whatever minutes you got coming off that bench, you promised this team that you were gonna be faithful with them. And I don’t think that that’s what we did the first two times we met them. … Suffering the two losses at the end of the season to Davidson and St. Joe’s, and being able to get revenge on both of them in this tournament was the most amazing feeling.”

Kaysia was told to keep her answer about the team’s mindset clean after the championship win, so she referenced the “White Chicks” quote, “time to totally kick ass,” by acronym only.  

“We just knew that we could beat them, and we had to have the confidence in ourselves and go out there and honestly, keep having fun,” she said. “We’ve been having fun this whole tournament, and we just wanted to keep going.”

The team has steadily improved under Blair-Lewis the last four seasons. Though George Mason finished in last place in the Atlantic 10 in her first year, the team won seven more games than the year before, its first conference game in 23 months, three total conference games and an A-10 Tournament game. 

In Blair-Lewis’ introductory press conference in 2021, she said, “We will be a winning program. You have just signed up with a coach who’s crazy enough to believe that you can win, that’s absolutely crazy enough to believe and make everything but excuses to do it. … I cannot wait to start hanging some banners here.” 

Belief has been a constant in Fairfax since Blair-Lewis’ arrival. The team has used the hashtag “BelieveBig” on social media since her first season. After the team’s Dec. 1, 2021, win over Florida, the program’s first win over a SEC opponent since 1996, Blair-Lewis explained the phrase in her opening statement: “We talked about with this program believing big and it’s for moments like this,” she said. “It is because of moments like this that you can believe bigger than what you’ve done.”

In her second season, the Patriots earned the No. 9 seed in the A-10 Tournament and earned the team’s first winning season since 2018-19. Last season, the team earned its first 20-win season since 2017-18 and earned the No. 4 seed before losing in the quarterfinals to Duquesne. 

This season, George Mason set a program record for wins in a season (27), reached the semifinals and championship of the conference tournament for the first time since joining the A-10 in 2013, and then made history in the championship.

“Last year we came here and we literally had our hearts broken,” Blair-Lewis said on Sunday. “And to go in that locker room and see those girls just laid out all over the floor, and you try to pick them back up for weeks. For [Walton] for months because she blamed herself that she lost the game as a freshman. And then God brings you right back to the place where you got your heart broken. And he says, ‘This is what it was all for.’ That’s what this feels like, redemption.’”

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Blair-Lewis wore her championship shirt over her dress and the net as a necklace to the press conference, soaking in the moment she knew would one day come. 

“When you have people that you’re leading, and they believe you’re worthy enough to follow … and that you’re crazy enough to tell them that we’re gonna be champions one day, and there’s no evidence of that, it’s a big responsibility,” she said. 

“It’s a responsibility that I carried every single day I walked into that arena, and I promised those parents that I was gonna take care of their child, on and off the court. And every single year, we took steps, and I said, ‘Tonight is the night you take the step to be a champion.’ So I guess we’re a little crazy, huh?”

Walton, who came to George Mason ahead of Blair-Lewis’ second season, is one of the players who saw the vision her coach had. “It was not like this before Coach Blair got here, and she’s the reason I came here,” Walton said. “The coaches made it very special. And I think as a team, we’ve worked hard, and that’s what makes it even … better winning the championship together.” 

Blair-Lewis became emotional when answering a question about what was going through her mind during the final moments of the game. 

“My dad is in hospice right now,” she said, fighting back tears. “I FaceTimed him before the game. He said, ‘Go win.’ He’s not just my dad. He was my coach. He’s a big part of the DMV coaching area. I really wish he could have been here, and I knew he was here in spirit, and that’s what I thought about in the last minute. This was for my dad.”

The win hadn’t set in for Blair-Lewis when the press conference started. Instead, she was seeing it through her players’ eyes. “I’m happy to watch them celebrate themselves,” she said. “Watch them celebrate this moment. Watch Mason Nation that came out to support us enjoy it. … When you’re a mom and you have kids, you’re happy for your kids first. I’m really happy for them, and I’m enjoying watching them be happy.”

Blair-Lewis’ pride in her team remained evident throughout the press conference as she saw the power of believing big paying off.

“We asked this team, these players four years ago, to … believe in something that was nowhere near present,” she said. “… And every year we recruited, we kept saying we’re gonna win a championship. We hung a banner in our practice facility that says, ‘Future A-10 champions.’ And now we can cross out future.”