Coming off an impressive win in its season-opener on the road against RIT Nov. 9, the State University of New York at New Paltz is back in action this weekend competing in the Tufts Tip Off Tournament, facing arguably its toughest competition it will see all year in the hosting Jumbos and MIT.

The Hawks earned a No. 23 preseason ranking from the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) following a run into the NCAA Sweet Sixteen last season and will face the No. 2 ranked Jumbos whose season ended in the Elite 8 a season ago. The Engineers were also an NCAA tournament team in 2019 after winning the NEWMAC championship and earning an automatic bid.

"We're really excited, really looking forward to this weekend," said SUNY New Paltz senior guard Marion Dietz. "MIT and Tufts both have really great programs, both made NCAA runs last year and we're just really excited to get into some really competitive basketball this early in the season." 
The Hawks will open up with MIT in the first round of the tournament Friday. Last season, the Engineers finished 21-8 overall with two of their eight losses coming from top-10 nationally ranked teams. They graduated their two leading scorers from last season in Kara Holinski and Taylor V'Dovec who averaged 11 and 9.4 points per game, respectively. As a team this past year, MIT registered just less than 67 points per game, but gave up less than 55 a contest.

The Engineers enter the matchup Friday against SUNY New Paltz 0-1 overall after suffering a season-opening loss to UMass Dartmouth, 87-86 in overtime.

The Jumbos, meanwhile, have yet to see their first action of the 2019-2020 season as they open up Friday in their own tournament against Roger Williams. Tufts loss just three games last season, going 28-3 on the year. It fell in a regular season matchup against conference rival Bowdoin Jan. 5, but later beat the Polar Bears in the NESCAC Championship to earn an automatic bid into the NCAA Tournament. Their other losses came against UMass Amherst Feb. 1 and then against Scranton University in the Elite 8.

The Jumbos lost their leading scorer from last season, but return three players who started all 31 games another who started 30 of 31 contests. The program went through a coaching change over the offseason, as they saw longtime head coach Carla Berube end her prolific 17-year run with the program after she took the head position at Division I Princeton University. During her tenure, the Jumbos were among the best Division III women's basketball programs in the country for the last two decades with the team reaching the NCAA championship twice, Final Four four times and the Sweet 16 nine times. The Jumbo's most recent national championship appearance came in 2018.

Tufts will arguably be the most established program the Hawks will have faced, but SUNY New Paltz is excited for the challenge. Despite graduating two All-American guards from last years' historic 2019 campaign, the team looked primed to compete for another long playoff run this season after a solid opening game against the Tigers. 

The Hawks had to get through a rough third quarter when they saw their double-digit lead slowly trickle away, but they managed to hold off a talented RIT squad to cement an 83-80 road win. They were carried by their experienced senior class with the four (Dietz, Paige Niemeyer, Philesha Teape and Maddie Van Pelt) accounting for 72 of the team's 83 points scored.

"Some good takeaways from Saturday's game were that we were able to finish the game and be somewhat composed even though we gave up that huge lead in the third quarter," said Dietz. "If you go bad, we fouled way too early in the third quarter and let the other team get into the bonus with about six minutes left."

Overall, the team shot just less than 43 percent in the game, while scoring 20 points off turnovers and 20 points on second chance opportunities, as they owned the glass early. Teape was a big catalyst in that, totaling her first double-double in her career with 12 rebounds to go along with her 10 points.

"I think our biggest challenge going into this weekend is just being able to stay focused the whole time," Dietz said. "We did a pretty good job this past weekend. We just didn't focus for about five minutes there, so it is really going to be about us focusing for 40 minutes and making sure we don't give each team's best players those opportunities to score and get themselves going."

The Hawks are set to face MIT Friday at 6 p.m. at UMass Boston's Clark Athletic Center and then will take on Tufts Saturday for a 4 p.m. tip-off.

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