All-American junior guard Brandi Dawson leads the Thunder in points and rebounds per game. Trine athletics photo

The Trine women made program history last season.

The Thunder captured the program’s first MIAA regular season and tournament championships. Trine made its first NCAA tournament appearance and notched its first tourney victory.

Now the squad is focused on adding another chapter to its record book.

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At 10-0 and victorious in 21 of its last 22 games, Trine is at No. 6 in the Top 25 poll.

“It’s really a credit to the players. They are very, very hard workers. When expectations are placed on them, they put even higher expectations on themselves,” Trine coach Ryan Gould said. “For the most part, this group has been together for two years and some of them have been here for three years. As coaches, we know what buttons to push and they have learned what is important for us. There’s a good relationship on both sides. We enjoy pushing them to reach those lofty goals.” 

The Thunder’s breakthrough season and NCAA tournament run was unexpected for Gould, but greatly welcomed.

“I would say that two seasons ago, we, as coaches, kind of pointed to this year to get there. To get to that level a year early was a big surprise to a lot of us,” he said. “You can’t replicate those opportunities. To get two games in the NCAA tournament was great. We have a long way to go between now and the end of conference play and we can’t take anything for granted, but the experiences from last year will help us as we try to repeat some of those things.”

Going from 19-8 in 2015-16 to 25-3 last year gave the team a boost.

“Getting as far as we did last year gave us a lot confidence,” Trine junior forward Brandi Dawson said. “We have a lot of momentum from that. We’ve been able to keep it going. We have confidence and we’re excited with our start, but we just know we can play better and keep improving.”

Now Trine has to learn how to handle success. As the MIAA preseason favorite, the Thunder won’t sneak up on anybody. That’s OK, though, the players look forward to that challenge.

“My first year coming in here, Hope and Calvin were the ones we were after. Now, having the target on our back, it’s a confidence booster. Knowing that teams are going to come in here and work extremely hard is really cool; it’s a great challenge,” Trine senior center Hayley Martin said. “I think our team is full of competitors. Knowing that we are seen as the best team in our conference, we have to bring our best to the table 100 percent of the time.”

Trine cruised in its first two MIAA wins, but needed Montana Martin’s late trey to secure a 50-47 win over Calvin on Dec. 9. 

“We talk each week about the game in front of us being the most important game of the season. You can’t win a conference championship in November or December, but you can play yourself out of the race,” Gould said. “Hayley missed our first three games, but is back. We feel like this is the healthiest we’ve been all season. We wanted to build some momentum going into break and hit the ground running for the second semester.” 

The team rolled past Heidelberg, 71-46, before its holiday break. It gets back at it in the D3hoops.com Classic in Las Vegas on Dec. 28-29. The Thunder opens with Wisconsin-Stout and then meets No. 3 Amherst, the defending national champ.

“We’re super excited to go to Vegas,” Hayley Martin said. “Playing Amherst will be a good indicator to see where we are. It’s nice knowing that we still have January and February to work on what we see we’re struggling with against them.”

Trine hasn’t struggled with too much. The Thunder graduated just one starter. Dawson, last year’s MIAA MVP and Martin, the MIAA defensive player of the year, lead the way. Dawson averages 16.1 points per game, while Hayley Martin is at 9.3. Cassidy Williams, Camilla Lira and Katy Steers are the other starters. The squad relies on a deep bench, too, to average 68.0 points per game.

“We’ve seen some teams play straight man-to-man and throw some different zones at us. We’ve seen a couple teams try to press us in a different way to get us out of our rhythm. Some of it worked earlier in the year, but we’ve been able to work through any issues,” Gould said. “We know every game presents a different challenge. We feel like we have the depth and personnel to adjust to different styles of play, when needed.”

While Trine can rack up points, the Thunder enjoys playing defense. It allows 44.0 points per game.

“I feel like the identity of the team is pretty similar to last year. We take a lot of pride in our defense. Offense comes easily to us; we have lot of people who can score. We can’t control if the buckets fall in or the shots aren’t falling, though,” Hayley Martin said. “We look to keep teams in single digits each quarter. It’s kind of a slap in the face if we let teams score 10, 12 points in one quarter.”

Defense is what Trine hopes fuels a long postseason run.

“If we know we’re struggling a little, we know we can bring each other together and calm down and focus on playing defense,” Martin said. “We know what we can do.”