How Central Michigan women's basketball remained the class of the MAC with new coach

Sue Guevara knew this feeling all too well.

Guevara, who spent 12 seasons becoming the winningest women's basketball coach in Central Michigan history, remembers her hands being “ice-cold” before and during almost every game of her tenure.

And on this day, watching her protégé Heather Oesterle lead the Chippewas in the Mid-American Conference tournament championship game, Guevara felt her hands going cold again.

“I was that exact same way pretty much the whole championship game,” Guevara said.

The Chippewas beat Bowling Green, 77-72, to claim the MAC’s automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. CMU, seeded 12th, will play Iowa in the tournament opener at 3 p.m. Sunday inside the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, where the entire tournament will be held.

Oesterle has, following Guevara's retirement after the 2018-19 season, molded the program's play style to her liking. The Chippewas are scoring a tick under 80 points a game this season, playing their best basketball right now.

And as a result, the Chippewas are headed to the NCAA tournament for the third straight time.

“We’ve been there, we’ve been on the big stage,” Oesterle said. “I think we’re playing pretty well right now. (I’m) excited to see what we can do down in Texas.”

Early success

Oesterle and Guevara have known each other for decades — since, Guevara estimates, Oesterle was 14 years old. The two were together at Michigan when Oesterle was a player and Guevara the head coach, and then again at CMU, where Oesterle was an assistant for 10 years.

“I’ve had an incredible mentor in Coach Guevara,” Oesterle said following the MAC tournament championship. “She got me ready to lead this program, and I just wanted to make her proud today.”

When the Chippewas lost each of their first three games last season, Oesterle picked up the phone and called Guevara, who was named the Kay Yow National Coach of the Year in 2018. The mentor offered reassurance.

“Listen, this is only the beginning,” Guevara recalls telling Oesterle. “You stay the course here, the team is improving. Stay the course, trust the process.

“You know what you are doing.”

Since then, Oesterle has been on a roll. In Year One, it was the regular season title. Oesterle won conference coach of the year and took the team to the MAC tournament riding a high.

However, Toledo upset CMU in the quarterfinals, just before the remainder of the season was shut down. With a large part of the core, namely reigning MAC Player of the Year Micaela Kelly, returning in 2020-21, expectations were high.

The Chippewas didn’t have as long a nonconference schedule this season as they would’ve liked because of the pandemic. CMU struggled with slow starts to games and lost four close games at home.

Heading into the season’s final week, the Chippewas were out of the running for a fifth-straight regular season title but very much alive in the race for a top seed. CMU dealt with its only cancellation of the season Feb. 27 at Eastern Michigan.

Contact tracing would thin the roster for the remainder of the season. If CMU was going to make a run, it had to do so with only eight players.

The ‘Great Eight’

Playing with eight players, as CMU has done its last five games, is always tough but, it helps when seven of them have at least three years of experience.

Alongside Kelly, there are seniors Maddy Watters and Kyra Bussell, juniors Kalle Martinez, Jahari Smith and Sophia Karasinski, redshirt sophomore Anika Weekes and true sophomore Molly Davis.

Kelly, Watters, Bussell, Martinez and Karasinski were on campus for the Chippewas’ run to the Sweet 16 in 2018.

“We have some players on our team with tournament experience,” Oesterle said. “And nothing trumps that."

Kelly was the third scoring option on that team, and Watters and Bussell were role players. Two years later, all three are starters and valued contributors with Kelly average more than 20 points per game.

Watters has developed into one of the country’s best 3-point shooters, while still possessing phenomenal court vision. Bussell has battled a shoulder injury as of late but is still a leader.

“They’ve done a lot for our program to get us here,” Oesterle said of her senior class. “They were more of role players. … Then they took over and made it their team.”

Even in a most unpredictable year, the Chippewas still found a way to get to go dancing in March.

“I got really emotional after the MAC tournament championship because we’ve been through a lot of adversity this year,” Oesterle said. “Like everybody. We went through some slumps, we went through some tough times. We finally came together and it’s that much more rewarding to be able to cut down the nets.”

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: NCAA tournament: How CMU women's basketball got back in March Madness