Revisiting the 2019-20 season’s unceremonious end for mid-major programs

The bus pulled into a truck stop, and the team waited. Some players left the bus and walked, while others stayed put. After some time, Baranczyk received the news that the conference tournament had been canceled, so she gathered the team.

This news didn’t come out of nowhere — the Big East men’s tournament had already been halted mid-game less than an hour prior — but there had still been hope, and there continued to be so many unknowns even after the news.

“Am I done playing college basketball?” Becca Hittner remembers asking herself on the bus back to Des Moines.

A little over two hours later, the announcement came that the NCAA Tournament was also canceled. Hittner and countless other players across the country faced the painful end to their college careers.

Five years have passed since the unceremonious end to that 2019-20 season, and it still has lingering effects. Many stories have been canonized, like the historic Oregon team and Sabrina Ionescu’s unfinished business, a major storyline as the guard was instrumental in the New York Liberty’s 2024 WNBA title run.

For mid-major programs and players, careers ended in silence with little national “what if” attention. Entire programs sat idle for more than a year and a half. While some programs bounced back, many saw historic peaks disappear instantly, as others faded away slowly.

In the years since, players and coaches who faced this challenge have had to balance the pride they know they should have with the pain of what could have been.

---

Order ‘Becoming Caitlin Clark’ and save 30%

---

Drake: A historic duo

The 2020 season wasn’t even the first time in the prior 12 months Drake’s season had come to a heartbreaking end. 

With the game tied and the clock ticking down in overtime of a first-round game in the 2019 NCAA tournament, Hittner closed out on Missouri’s Jordan Roundtree and got a hand on the game-winning attempt, seemingly sending things to double overtime. The refs did not agree, whistling a foul and sending Roundtree to the line to shoot three free throws with 0.8 seconds remaining.

After Roundtree went just 1-for-3 at the line and the Bulldogs used a timeout to advance the ball, Drake trailed by just one point with a chance to make the foul call irrelevant. Hittner shook her defender for an open catch-and-shoot look from the top of the 3-point arc, but it didn’t go down.

In both moments, Hittner made the competitive play but got the wrong outcome.

“You know, sometimes the ball doesn’t go in the hole,” Baranczyk told media in Iowa City following the loss.

The loss fueled them entering the 2019-20 season. “In the offseason, you get so hungry and so solid on what you want to do different and better,” Baranczyk told Her Hoop Stats six months later in the leadup to that season.

Everyone knew it would be the last year for Hittner and Sara Rhine, the most accomplished duo in Drake and MVC history. The Bulldogs haven’t lacked star players before or since, but this duo was special.

Hittner, a hometown kid from nearby Urbandale, ended her career as the sixth-leading scorer in program history with 2,133 points. She won three consecutive MVC Player of the Year awards, one of just three players in league history to do so.

Rhine, a redshirt senior from Eldon, Mo., was one of the nation’s most efficient scorers for the third season in a row. Her 2,186 points rank one spot ahead of Hittner on Drake’s all-time leaderboard at fifth. 

On the glass, Rhine finished devastatingly close to another milestone. Rhine tied a career-high with 15 rebounds on March 6 against in-state rival UNI to reach 999, but nobody knew it would be her final game.

“I’ll give up one of my rebounds if you could do that. Like, she can have one,” Hittner told The Next this February.

By the end of the 2019-20 season, Hittner and Rhine were one of just two active duos in the nation to both reach the 2,000-point mark, joining Oregon’s Ionescu and Ruthy Hebard.

With the season over and no chance to avenge 2019’s overtime loss or see this historic senior class of Hittner, Rhine and Brenni Rose reach even higher heights, the team reserved a space at Johnny’s Italian Steakhouse and they gathered together as a team one last time.

“We told stories, and we cried … and we laughed,” then-associate head coach Allison Pohlman remembers from that dinner. “Oh my gosh, belly laughs to the point of tears, and then more tears and more stories. And just really [trying] to pay honor to an unbelievable group.”

In April 2021, Baranczyk was hired away from Drake by Oklahoma. She was succeeded by Pohlman, who was with Baranczyk in Des Moines throughout her tenure as head coach. 

“I always said she was the greatest utility person I’ve ever met,” Baranczyk said of Pohlman. “She just does what needs to be done, and I think she still is as a head coach, too.

“I don’t get to watch as many [Drake] games as I want because you get so locked in and siloed into what you’re doing, but my kids constantly remind me when I’m watching that I don’t coach there anymore. I need to stop yelling at the TV.”

---

Want even more women’s sports in your inbox?

Subscribe now to our sister publication The IX and receive our independent women’s sports newsletter six days a week. Learn more about your favorite athletes and teams around the world competing in soccer, tennis, basketball, golf, hockey and gymnastics from our incredible team of writers.

Readers of The Next now save 50% on their subscription to The IX.

---

Rider: Unprecedented heights

Rider was in the midst of a magical season in March 2020. The Broncs claimed the regular season title in dramatic fashion, a buzzer-beating layup by senior Amari Johnson on the road against Monmouth.

The game-winner, dubbed the “Hail Amari,” was the product of so much hard work and dedication to the program. Rider’s very experienced starting lineup — featuring four seniors — accounted for 85.6% of the team’s scoring, and no player had a larger impact than Stella Johnson.

She is inarguably the greatest player in program history. Once simply happy to be playing Division I basketball, heightened recognition in her junior season had her seriously considering a future as a professional.

“My senior season, when WNBA coaches started coming to practices, I think that’s when it kind of clicked that I actually have a chance to play with the best,” Stella Johnson told The Next.

In her senior season of 2019-20, she was on another level. Her 24.8 points per game led Division I, and she also added 7.6 rebounds, 3.8 assists and 2.9 steals per game.

“Stella and I got along very well,” former Rider head coach Lynn Milligan said to The Next, “because we both hate losing more than we like winning, and Stella just was not going to allow her team to lose.”

And for this play, with 0.5 seconds remaining and down by one, winning meant using all of her gravity to be a decoy with redshirt senior Lexi Stover inbounding the ball. 

“I was just hoping [Stover] would not pass it to me … because obviously I wasn’t open,” Johnson told The Next. “Every time we had a close game, it was always Stover taking the ball out because she had a great IQ.” 

Stover threw a perfect pass to Amari Johnson, a senior in her second season since transferring in from Rhode Island (no relation to Stella). Amari Johnson sunk what Milligan calls “the biggest shot in [Rider] history,” and elated chaos ensued.

WIIIIIIIINNNNNNNN!!!!! Amari finishes off the Stover feed. Broncs are your 2020 MAAC Champions!!! #GoBroncs #maAChoops20 #BroncsToTheBoardwalk pic.twitter.com/9vm0PXeIXA

— Rider Women’s Basketball (@RiderWBB) March 7, 2020

Four days later, on March 11, Stella Johnson willed the team to victory in the opening round of the MAAC Tournament. In her final collegiate game, a 79-74 win over Niagara, she set a tournament record with 37 points.

“I’m so glad that she finished playing her game,” Milligan said. “Playing the way she played, leading her team to victory, which is what she did that whole year.”

The next day, a practice day for the Broncs between rounds, the team practiced in a small gym with wooden backboards in Margate City, N.J.

“As we were going to practice, our phones were blowing up a little bit about other tournaments being canceled,” Milligan said. “We tried to be really light, have a little fun … just to kind of take the edge off of everything.”

As they boarded the bus to return to their Atlantic City hotel, they learned that the MAAC Tournament had been canceled.

The Broncs had never made the NCAA Tournament, and as the regular-season champions, they still hoped they could reach that goal without the MAAC Tournament. A few hours later, those hopes were dashed with the NCAA’s announcement, so Milligan gathered the six seniors in her hotel room.

“The seven of us tried to process that together, to understand it,” said Milligan. “There [were] tears, there was anger, there was upset, there was disappointment; all of that.”

“I remember everyone’s faces,” Stella Johnson said. “The hotel room was looking out over the ocean. So it was kind of like everyone just was looking out the window, not talking. Everyone was sad, and it was just surreal.”

“That conversation between myself and those six seniors was a very, very difficult conversation and a moment I won’t forget,” Milligan said. “Because I knew what I had to tell them was really just going to change everything. The things that they worked for … and the goal that we had set for this group wasn’t going to be fully reached, tangibly.”

Even without that final, tangible goal, all of the hard work Milligan referred to is evident across the 2020 senior class’s time in Lawrenceville, N.J. Those seniors lifted the program to two of the three 20-win seasons in program history, and 2019-20 is the peak regardless of how it finished.

---

Add Locked On Women’s Basketball to your daily routine

Here at The Next, in addition to the 24/7/365 written content our staff provides, we also host the daily Locked On Women’s Basketball podcast. Join us Monday through Saturday each week as we discuss all things WNBA, collegiate basketball, basketball history and much more. Listen wherever you find podcasts or watch on YouTube.

---

Princeton: A 20-month wait

For then-first-year head coach Carla Berube, the 2020 season was going about as well as one could hope. Her Princeton Tigers squad was 26-1, with their sole blemish being an overtime loss against Iowa on the road.

“Even the one blemish … [was an] incredible experience and environment,” Berube told The Next. “The season progressed really well. We had a great nonconference slate and then did really well in conference, and things were running on all cylinders.”

Other than that one loss, the only other game they didn’t win by at least 12 points was a two-point win at Seton Hall, in which they were without their star player, Bella Alarie.

Despite playing in just 106 games across four seasons — which is well outside the top 10 in program history — Alarie finished her career as the program’s all-time leader in points, double-doubles and blocks while ranking third in total rebounds.

Entering the 2019-20 season, Alarie was projected as an early-to-middle first-round pick in the 2020 WNBA draft. The chance to bring her team to new heights on the national stage in the NCAA Tournament would have been an opportunity to raise her draft stock even higher.

Despite making the tournament in eight of the previous 10 seasons, the Tigers were 1-7 in the first round. In 2015 — their sole second-round appearance in team history — they were knocked out by No. 1 seed Maryland.

That year’s Princeton squad had a real chance to be the first mid-major program to make an Elite Eight since Dayton in 2015. ESPN’s final bracketology for 2020 projected the Tigers to be a No. 6 seed, and their underlying metrics were even stronger. 

The Tigers’ Her Hoop Stats (HHS) Rating — which adjusts a team’s efficiency to their strength of schedule — ranked sixth in the nation and was the second-highest at the time among any mid-major program since 2009-10, trailing only the 2014-15 Princeton team that went 31-1.

Because the Ivy League was ahead of the curve in canceling its conference tournament, Princeton had more time in limbo than many other NCAA Tournament hopefuls, even as the school itself was going remote.

“We were kind of hearing about [a] waiver [to remain on campus] and there being potential for us to stay and play the NCAA Tournament,” Alarie told The Next. “But I think all of it was just kind of like rumor, or us kind of just holding on to that little bit of hope that we’d be able to play.”

When the news came 48 hours later, Berube spoke with Alarie and fellow senior Taylor Baur.

“I honestly don’t remember the conversation, like specifically what she said,” Alarie recalled. “I just remember me and Taylor Baur — my co-captain, my best friend at Princeton — we were both just crying. We were really disappointed.

“We felt like that was the year where we were going to be really successful in the postseason, but you can’t predict these things. So I think we were really proud of how much we just put everything out on the table and dominated all season. But you know, there’s always that thought in the back of your head, like, ‘What if?’”

As everyone would find out later, the impact on Princeton and the entire Ivy League was twofold. Exactly eight months after the NCAA canceled the 2020 NCAA Tournament, the Ivy League announced it was canceling the 2020-21 season.

Suddenly, March 2020 was no longer just the end of Alarie and Baur’s Princeton careers; it was also the end for then-juniors Carlie Littlefield, Sydney Boyer and McKenna Haire.

The Ivy League does not allow graduate students to play. To retain their fourth year of eligibility in the conference, those three would have needed to withdraw from classes entirely for the full academic year when only the non-conference slate had been canceled.

Princeton wasn’t alone in this hardship, and it wasn’t limited to the juniors from that 2019-20 season. Though they still had years to play in the conference, it is hard not to wonder what additional impact players like Abby Meyers and Kaitlyn Chen could have had with one more season at Princeton.

Elsewhere in the conference, young players like Kaitlyn Davis at Columbia, McKenzie Forbes at Harvard and Kayla Padilla at Penn also saw their Ivy careers shortened, precipitating their migration out west as graduates on the USC roster in 2023-24.

The what-ifs aren’t limited to players. Berube has compiled an astounding resume in her time at Princeton. Berube has posted an overall record of 121-23 with the Tigers, including a 65-5 record in regular-season Ivy League play and a perfect 6-0 in Ivy Madness.

Still, it is hard not to wonder how much better it might look with a deep tournament run in 2019-20, let alone another year to stack up wins.

---

The Next, a 24/7/365 women’s basketball newsroom

The Next: A basketball newsroom brought to you by The IX. 24/7/365 women’s basketball coverage, written, edited and photographed by our young, diverse staff and dedicated to breaking news, analysis, historical deep dives and projections about the game we love.

---

“On a computer screen trying to function” 

While most teams did not have as long of a hiatus as Princeton and the rest of the Ivy League, every team entered the spring of 2020 with many unknowns and surrounded by so much change.

Once the season was officially over and schools went to remote learning, everyone went their separate ways. Like the rest of the world, teams turned to Zoom to spend time together in a safe way. Team dynamic and closeness couldn’t be the same.

“There’s just a lot of life that was happening at that point, and none of us knew how to lead it,” Baranczyk said. “And it’s really hard to lead it when you can’t be in the same room.

“I think that was something that was really special about those teams — and special about teams, period — you get to share space together. You get to have real conversations, and you fall down and you have real emotion. I mean, it’s the most beautiful part about being on a team, and yet we’re on a computer screen trying to function.”

April’s WNBA draft provided Princeton and Rider a chance to gather virtually as they tuned in to witness the culmination of their all-time great players’ collegiate careers.

Johnson was home in her pajamas as the team watched the draft broadcast over Facetime. Shortly after Johnson received a text from her agent, a teammate noticed Johnson’s name on the ESPN overlay during a commercial break, announcing the Phoenix Mercury had selected her No. 29 overall.

“Everyone was going crazy, and my parents came downstairs to hug me and kiss me and all that,” Johnson recalled. “It was a good feeling just to see my name on TV. And then I got the call from [then-Phoenix head coach] Sandy Brondello, and that was awesome too because she’s one of the best coaches.”

“[Seeing] that helped everybody,” Milligan said. “Because everybody knew what this season and … this university and her career, what that all meant to Stella. And for her to have that moment was really important for everybody to be a part of.”

For Alarie, her draft night moment came dangerously close to a tech nightmare.

ESPN sent makeshift broadcast kits to several of the top projected picks, consisting of iPhones for cameras and gear that allowed the producers to have a direct line to them as the night progressed.

Alarie and her family set up everything in their basement, with her family working hard to make her big night as special as possible. With the first four picks announced, Alarie got a call on her earpiece.

“They were like, ‘Hey, you’re about to be picked in 30 seconds, but the iPhone has gone black. I can’t see you guys on the screen,’” she recounted.

As the seconds ticked away, everyone frantically tried to figure out what was happening. It turned out that the phone had been plugged in for long enough to overheat, causing it to shut down.

“My whole family is, like, freaking out,” Alarie said. “[The producers are] like, ‘You’re gonna be on in 15 seconds … see if you can plug it in.’ And we’re all freaking out, everyone’s scrambling, and we plug the phone in, and it still looks black, and I get the call in my ear that we’re on. And in that very second, I guess the camera was, by some miracle, working, and we were live, and I got drafted.”

The wubble season

While the remaining coaches and players spent the spring and summer navigating preparation for the next NCAA season, Alarie and Johnson felt the whiplash of going from an unusual draft experience into the most unusual WNBA season in league history.

Before the pandemic, the league underwent a major overhaul as the new and improved collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was announced in January. Six months after the CBA was announced and three months after the draft, the WNBA announced that the 2020 season would be held in a quarantined “isolation zone” in Bradenton, Fla., which would become known unofficially as the Wubble.

Playing on a prep school campus in front of no fans was far from what either player had envisioned for their first season.

“Obviously, it’s not what you expect for your rookie year,” Alarie told The Next. “I was fortunate to have teammates that were understanding of the situation, and we all kind of realized we were all we had, especially in the bubble.”

“It was a college campus all over again,” Johnson said. “Rider is a small campus — and IMG Academy was bigger than Rider — but to me, it was the same thing. But it was weird because I didn’t know anybody.”

Phoenix waived Johnson before the season began, but Chicago signed her to a hardship contract after Sydney Colson tested positive for COVID-19.

Johnson recalled arriving in Bradenton and meeting her teammates, including Courtney Vandersloot, Allie Quigley, Gabby Williams and Kahleah Copper, whom she had been watching for years.

“Being able to be walking on campus and there goes [Diana] Taurasi,” Johnson remembered. “Or there goes Skylar Diggins-Smith or Sue Bird. I mean, come on.”

Johnson played four games for the Sky before Colson returned and her hardship contract had to end. While packing to leave the next day, her agent called to let her know that the Washington Mystics wanted to sign her to a hardship contract following an injury to Aerial Powers. 

That night, she played five minutes for the Mystics despite not having time to learn any plays.

Six days later, with one of Washington’s starters injured, then Mystics head coach Mike Thibault elevated Johnson to the starting lineup for a game against the Atlanta Dream. 

“I was really nervous. I’m playing with [Emma] Meessemen and [Ariel] Atkins, and they’re really smart players. So I was just so nervous. I didn’t shoot two [open looks], and I got yelled at by Thibault. That kind of woke me up a little bit, and then the next shot I took I made, and he was like, ‘See, finally.’”

Johnson finished the game with 25 points on 8-for-13 shooting, including 6-for-9 from behind the arc, to go with three rebounds, three assists and a steal.

“Tina Charles and A’ja Wilson hit me up, and I thought that was amazing,” Johnson said.

---

Order ‘Rare Gems’ and save 30%

Howard Megdal, founder and editor of The Next and The IX, released his latest book on May 7, 2024. This deeply reported story follows four connected generations of women’s basketball pioneers, from Elvera “Peps” Neuman to Cheryl Reeve and from Lindsay Whalen to Sylvia Fowles and Paige Bueckers.

If you enjoy his coverage of women’s basketball every Wednesday at The IX, you will love “Rare Gems: How Four Generations of Women Paved the Way for the WNBA.” Click the link below to order and enter MEGDAL30 at checkout.

---

Homecomings

Hittner, the hometown product, is now on the staff for the Bulldogs after a stint playing overseas. She was a graduate assistant for the 2021-22 season and is now the director of basketball analytics and player development.

“I think anybody that steps into this program understands what the standard is,” Hittner said. “​​Being able to be a part of this program is very special to me. And then to continue to help it grow and continue down a path that’s only going to get better.”

Her experiences have yielded lessons that Hittner hopes can be used to help the new wave of Drake players stay present.

“I think something that I try to portray to our players is you never know when things are going to end,” Hittner said. “And so you can’t take anything for granted. I thought I had at least a whole conference tournament, and then a postseason tournament.”

After announcing her retirement from the WNBA in February 2023, Alarie now works as the director of player development and experience for Georgetown, a short trip from her hometown of Bethesda, Md.

“I always knew I wanted to come back to sports in some regard,” Alarie says about her post-playing career plans. “Being a part of the team and being part of that culture is so important to me feeling fulfilled and giving me something to work towards every day. I think that’s just ingrained in me as an athlete.”

“So right now, I’m just trying on different hats and seeing what I want to do moving forward,” Alarie said. “I think the biggest thing is just my experience as an athlete and then being able to learn those skills more deeply in my master’s program. Being an assistant coach and [in a] player development role here at Georgetown has been really valuable to seeing what I want to do next.”

Stella Johnson now plays professionally in Poland, but Milligan and Rider made sure to have her back on campus in 2022 for a special night: her jersey retirement.

An ankle injury while playing overseas kept her out for the 2022-23 season, so Johnson was back home in New Jersey for the year. This gave everyone the perfect chance to honor the best player in program history.

“I remember seeing all my old teammates that I haven’t seen in a while,” Johnson said. “A lot of my old coaches that left Rider, my trainers, the fans that used to always come to the games were there. But I was really nervous to talk in front of the crowd.

“It was really surreal just to see my number up there. … I think I kind of downplay how crazy that is. But every time I go to Rider, I sometimes forget to look at it, and then [say], ‘Okay, let me go back and go look at it.’”

Even though Rider had rings made to celebrate their regular-season MAAC championship, the push for a championship ring in a completed season still fuels Johnson.

“I’m taking that challenge overseas with me,” Johnson said. “We had so many highs and lows my four years [at Rider], and overseas is a bunch of highs and lows. So I kind of take that with me just to stay low when I’m high and stay high when I’m low … and keeping a positive attitude.”