LEWISTON, Maine -- Every year, the Bates women's basketball team outlines three pillars of focus for the upcoming season. This year those pillars are joy, trust, and consistency, as the No. 12 nationally ranked Bobcats open the 2025-26 campaign Saturday afternoon when they host WPI at 3 p.m. in Alumni Gym. 

"I think something that challenged our squad last year was managing pressure and expectations within a program that's had some success," head coach Alison Montgomery said. "Our team has wanted it so badly, has been so committed, and has worked so hard to achieve certain goals. So sometimes the focus has been too much on outcome and just getting lost in that, versus process. So it's about finding joy in every moment." 

The Bobcats graduated one senior from a team that went 17-10 and advanced to the second round of last season's NCAA Division III tournament.

D3hoops.com preseason second team All-American and senior captain center Elsa Daulerio (Harpswell, Maine) returns after leading the team in scoring and rebounding a year ago at 14.7 points per game and 9 rebounds per contest. She blocked 47 shots and is the program's all-time leading shot blocker with 153 and counting. Daulerio is also just 43 points from 1,000 in her career.

"Elsa embodies what this program is all about," Montgomery said. "We just want her to go out and play with a ton of poise and confidence and to not really have that feel like pressure. We want her to feel like she's prepared both as a player and as a leader, and just go out there and see what we can do."

The Bobcats have a pair of post players backing up Daulerio, with senior Danielle Adams (Southborough, Mass.) showing off an impressive ability to hit mid-range jumpers and junior Petra Kuncz (Budapest, Hungary) now fully healthy and ready to roll.

"Petra has some real gifts athletically in terms of her length and her ability to move, and that turnaround jumper Dani can hit is hard to defend," Montgomery said. "So we're very excited about both of them and hoping to give Elsa a chance to catch her breath every now and then." 

Joining Daulerio as a team captain is senior Ava James (Bethesda, Md.), who averaged six points per game last year and had a breakthrough campaign shooting the ball. James knocked down more than 35 percent of her shots from long distance. Her top performance came against Williams, when James poured in a career-high 17 points on 6-10 shooting and grabbed seven rebounds in an 80-74 victory. 

"Ava is a leader for us in a lot of ways," Montgomery said. "One of our values is consistency and I think something that's been her separator. A really important component to consistency is the way you show up every day whether you're playing well, whether you've come off a win or a loss, or whether your shot's falling or it's not, or whether there's outside things off the court that are challenging you. Ava embodies that consistency as a teammate in our program." 

Junior guard Sarah Hughes (Rumson, N.J.) was second to Daulerio in scoring last year for Bates, averaging 11.4 points per game and shooting a team-leading .457 from the floor and .404 from three-point range. Hughes experienced some adversity last year after a fast start but bounced back to turn in back-to-back big performances in the NCAA tournament for Bates, leading the Bobcats in scoring both games.

"That's sort of the fun of it, is to watch all these women experience growth in their four years and also have that reflected in the growth of our program," Montgomery said. "So I think it's no different for her than any other woman on our team. It's getting through the ups and downs together, maintaining that perspective of joy, whether we're facing adversity or whether we're playing really well."

Senior guard Sophie Spolter (Blacklick, Ohio) returns as well, coming off a season that saw her average a career-high 8.2 points per game and make the biggest shot of her career to propel the Bobcats past Southern Virginia in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Known for taking charges, Spolter is all heart and hustle for the Bobcats.

"We want each woman to understand, we all come with strengths, we all come with weaknesses, we work on those weaknesses, but really the trick is can we maximize who we are on the court and can we bring that every day?" Montgomery said. "And no one does that better than Sophie, and she brings with it a lot of enthusiasm. She's really our engine in that way."

Daulerio, James, Hughes, and Spolter all started every game last season. Coming off the bench, sophomore Lily Brown (Dallas, Texas) averaged a tick under 5 points per game and turned in a huge performance as a rookie in the NCAA tournament against Southern Virginia, scoring a season-high 14 points on 6-11 shooting and dishing out four assists. 

"Lily's a tenacious competitor on both ends," Montgomery said. "We're really pushing her to be consistent on both ends, to play every possession of defense and to stay really consistent offensively too. She has some tools offensively. Her ability to handle off a ball screen really sets her apart on our team."

The Bobcats have a lot of depth, as junior Mya Hicks (Ann Arbor, Mich.) and sophomore Lily Lambo (Watertown, Mass.) both averaged around 14 minutes a game last year. Sophomores Abby Magendantz (West Hartford, Conn.) and Abby Walsh (Evanston, Ill.) both got valuable experience last year as rookies.

Add in promising first-years Claire Gaetani (Old Town, Maine) and Londyn Perry (Dallas, Texas) and the Bobcats can go deep into their bench this year to help them achieve their goals.

"We want to be better defensively," Montgomery said. "I think we have all the tools, we have the personnel for that, so we want to see that a little more measurable in terms of our numbers, in terms of turnovers we're forcing, in terms of just the discomfort we're making teams feel. We also really want to be a better rebounding team. So we've been focusing on that a ton, really on both ends. And then transition is a big focus for us too. Again, we feel that we have the depth, the athleticism, the speed, so we want to try to score early and be defensively really tough in transition as well."