By Corey Johns

On Friday Carlee Cassidy broke an over two-decade old UMBC women’s basketball record for most points in a season with a 10-point performance. That game gave her 613 points, breaking Tammy McCarthy’s record of 609 set in the 1985-86 season. Her effort was not enough; UMBC dropped the conference tournament opener to Binghamton, 66-54.

Although Cassidy broke the school record the best Retriever on the court was freshman Michelle Kurowski. Kurowski became the third Retriever ever to score 400 points in a season after posting 23 in this game.

Without Kurowski, the final score would have been much farther from the 12 points by which the Retrievers lost. She was the only retriever who could find a rhythm from the floor. The team as a whole went 14-50 (28 percent) from the floor and Kurowski went 7-11 (63.6 percent).

At the end of the season awards banquet Kurowski was one of three Retrievers called up for an award. She was selected to the All-Rookie Team along with Erin Brown (Cassidy was the third as she was selected to the Second Team All-AEC), but she was not selected as Rookie of the Year.

That award went to Binghamton’s Andrea Holmes, whom Kurowski bested in every stats category except steals—which they tied—and assists. Unlike Kurowski, however, Holmes is a point guard.

“I definitely think that was a reason I had an extra boost of energy [in Friday’s game] because it is disappointing that I didn’t get it [Rookie of the Year],” Kurowski said. “I was on the All-Rookie team, which is amazing, but I just wanted to leave everything out there because it can potentially be your last game, which it was.”

But the future is still bright for UMBC because potentially everybody returns next season. In the beginning of the year senior Chantay Fraizer left the team for personal reasons, leaving UMBC with no seniors on the roster.

Phil Stern believes that because of this adversity his team overachieved this season. They were picked fifth in the preseason poll with Frazier but finished fifth without her and new offensive system.

“We’ve never talked about how young we were all season but we do have five great freshmen to build around,” Stern said. “The future is certainly bright with our freshman and Carlee coming back as a senior.”