The Amherst women’s basketball team had a successful week, competing as the top- ranked team in the nation during the last week of regular season play.

After a pair of tough road matchups the previous weekend, the purple and white hosted games on both Friday and Saturday in Lefrak Gymnasium.

On Friday night, Amherst hosted conference foe Middlebury. The game seemed evenly matched in the first few minutes.
At the end of the quarter, Amherst held a slight 11-7 lead courtesy of three pointers by Meghan Sullivan ’19 and Meredith Doswell ’17.

The purple and white proceeded to destroy the Panthers in the second quarter, tallying 24 points and allowing Middlebury to score only two. Entering halftime, the score was 35-9, favoring Amherst.

Amherst continued this dominance to start the second half, with Ali Doswell ’17 scoring the first seven points of the third quarter. The purple and white also maintained their strong defensive effort, widening the lead to 40 points. Off the bench, Hannah Fox ’20 impressed, scoring a career high 14 points, including four three-point plays.

Emma McCarthy ’19 added nine rebounds, while JJ Daniell ’19 secured six boards. The final score was 67-33 in favor of the purple and white.

On Saturday, Amherst hosted Hamilton in the team’s last regular season game. The purple and white got off to a fast start, scoring the first 14 points of the game and leading 23-5 after one quarter of play. Buckets from Meredith Doswell, McCarthy and Madeline Eck ’20 added to the Amherst lead that reached 31-10 at the intermission.

For the second straight game, Amherst roared out of the gates at the start of the third quarter, holding Hamilton scoreless for the first 8:40 of the frame. Eck hit a pair of threes and McCarthy shot 4-5 from the field in the quarter.

In the fourth period, Natalie Nardella ’20 scored seven of Amherst’s 10 points while fellow first-year Cam Hendricks added three points. Amherst finished off Hamilton by a score of 67-21.

With the win, Amherst finished the regular season at 24-0, giving the team the top seed in the NESCAC tournament. This is the third time the team has finished a regular season undefeated, with the other two marks coming in 2009-10 and 2011-12.

Amherst will play Bates at home starting at 4 p.m. next Saturday, Feb. 18, in the NESCAC tournament quarterfinals.