Along with the sting of defeat, there was another shared feeling in the North Dakota locker room after the Fighting Hawks loss in the league tournament quarterfinals. Although they were out after just one game in Sioux Falls, the team wanted its season to be anything but over.
 
“This team is still really hungry,” head coach Mallory Bernhard said in the press conference following the loss to Omaha on March 5. “They’re saying, ‘Coach, we want to keep going.’ They’re not ready for it to end.” 
 
UND would get its wish. 
 
The Fighting Hawks’ appearance in last week’s Women’s Basketball Invitational gave that eager group one final run together. As importantly, it gave the newly-extended Bernhard and her program an opportunity to tick off a few more milestones as UND eyes a further ascent in the Summit next season.
 
The ink was dry on plenty of growth for the Fighting Hawks long before they set off for Lexington, Ky. Bernhard’s two-win debut campaign in 2019-20, where COVID derailed schedules and made practices inconsistent, was long in the rearview mirror. This season was objectively the program’s best in seven years, with its most wins (19) and best conference record (11-7) since the 2016-17 season. 
 
And the manner of some of those wins had been a big point of progress. The team finished the regular season strong, winning six of its last seven games, which was very much the opposite of what happened the year prior when UND entered Sioux Falls on a four-game losing streak. Bernhard had challenged her team to finish with a flourish, and they did just that. 
 
Coming out on top of a win-or-go-home game, however, proved elusive. 
 
The third-seeded Fighting Hawks simply could not get enough stops against a Mavericks team it had swept in the regular season, and had beaten by 18 points in Baxter Arena just a few weeks prior. The postseason bug had bitten them yet again. The loss to Omaha dropped UND to just 1-4 in Summit League Tournament play since joining the league, with its lone win coming in its opener in 2019. 
 
Bernhard reflected on that after the game amid a slew of upsets in the tournament.
 
“We’ve come down here and unfortunately just haven’t seen success. Yes, we’ve made progress but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what seed you are,” she said. “We have teams proving that all over. Progress is great, of course we want to keep making progress, but at the end of the day you have to get yourselves lined up and ready to go here in Sioux Falls.” 
 
While it wasn’t the conference tournament, the WBI let UND check another box on the 2022-23 season.
 
The Fighting Hawks may have gone 1-2 in Lexington but that one was, for lack of a better term, an especially big one. Their dramatic 102-99 overtime win over Northern Illinois in the consolation bracket on March 18 gave the program its first non-conference tournament postseason win since joining Division I, and was layered with standout moments. 
 
Program cornerstone Claire Orth had the chance to make a parade of clutch plays late in regulation, including hitting a three and making a layup in the final few minutes that gave UND the lead in a back-and-forth ending. In total, the WBI gave the Lino Lakes, Minn. native the chance to wrap up a tremendous, 142-game career in style. She scored 17 points in the tight loss to Florida International to close the tournament, putting her over the 1,000-point mark. 
 
Similarly, Juliet Gordon scored five critical points in the extra frame to beat the Huskies, and then went for 15 points and eight rebounds against the Panthers, putting an exclamation mark on a remarkable comeback season. 
 
And while those two players will be gone next season, the ones that could be a part of UND’s next step up the ladder had their moments as well. That, of course, included Kacie Borowicz, who was stellar in the NIU win with 35 points, two of which came on a go-ahead layup in overtime that may particularly resonate with her over the offseason. Junior DJ Davis also scored a season-high eight points against NIU, including critical baskets in the extra period. 
 
“As a program we need to learn how to play in a playoff or postseason environment and today we had the fight, intensity and want to that is required at this time of year,” Bernhard said in a release after the NIU win. 
 
The WBI has proven to be a launching point for some teams. Cleveland State, which took part in 2022, went 30-5 this year and won the Horizon League Tournament to make the NCAA Tournament. Bowling Green went 27-6 and made the WNIT after playing in the WBI last year. There were teams that did not fare as well this year, but of the eight teams that played in the 2022 WBI, all but one won at least one conference tournament game this season. 
 
It might be gross oversimplification to say that was solely due to the postseason experience those teams gained playing in last year’s event. But, in the case of UND, those three games – and that overtime win – are now the epilogue on a 2022-23 season that had already been plenty successful. It would seem it could only help as Bernhard continues to build her program in Grand Forks.