JCU's road started four years ago

More news about: John Carroll
Mar 05, 2026
John Carroll athletics photo by Jose Figueroa
 

By Riley Zayas
The Scoop on D3 Women’s Hoops

UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS, Ohio — During the first season Ava Ryncarz and Carmen Heuker spent at John Carroll four years ago, the Blue Streak women’s basketball team found itself playing a scrimmage against a team of JCU alums. Talented alums. Several of whom had been on the senior-led roster the season prior, when JCU put up 100 points in a first round NCAA Tournament win as part of a 23-4 campaign. 

For the wide-eyed freshmen who had watched that monumental 2021-2022 season unfold as high school commits, the scrimmage didn’t go quite as well as they would’ve liked. The alumni team may not have been wearing JCU uniforms any longer, but their edge was still very much there.

As time has gone on, though, with that group of freshmen raising their own bar, the tide has turned more and more in those alumni scrimmages in favor of the current Blue Streaks. When they met on the court earlier this season, it was abundantly clear there was no longer only one NCAA Tournament-caliber team in the building. 

“We see how much our team has grown just even playing against them over the four years,” Heuker, a senior guard, said Wednesday. “Obviously, our freshman year, it didn’t go amazing. But this year, scrimmaging them we could definitely tell we took control and we were the dominant factor against them.” 

It was a glimpse into the Blue Streaks’ potential, a preview of the success on the horizon. After four years of pushing for a return trip to the NCAA Tournament, weathering three consecutive seasons of OAC Tournament quarterfinal exits and incremental achievement, JCU arrived when its name showed up as a host for a first-weekend regional in Monday’s selection show. Going 24-4 in a conference featuring three teams in the Top 16 of the current D3hoops.com Top 25 Poll is the sort of success that gets a team there. 

“I’ve never experienced that before, so it was really cool,” Ryncarz, JCU’s dead-eye 3-point sharpshooter, said of the bracket reveal. “I didn’t know what to expect. Hearing our name called was a huge deal. But the fact of being able to host? That was such a cool thing.”

It is also a new thing for JCU women’s basketball, who will host in the tournament for the first time in program history, welcoming TCNJ into the DeCarlo Varsity Center on Friday evening. The historical piece of the 2025-26 squad’s distinctions is not lost on the players themselves, nor head coach Beth Andrews, who a little over a decade ago was JCU’s leading scorer in a 2015 first round tournament game against Maryville. 

She experienced two tournaments as a Blue Streak herself, and remembers vividly the magnitude of reaching Division III basketball’s big stage. After taking JCU to the 2022 tournament as a head coach, she now gets to see another group of players wear the same uniform she once did and step into an environment that in her words, “just feels so real.”

“It’s just so special that you get to see that NCAA credential around your neck, and see the signs go up,” Andrews, in her sixth season as JCU’s head coach, said. “Women’s basketball has grown so much since my days back then, so I think that the attention on it is so earned. I hope my girls enjoy every moment.

“As a coach, Ava, Carmen, and Kaylie [McKenney] are three that committed to John Carroll even prior to us getting into that NCAA Tournament. They believed in my messaging that, ‘You can do this. You can get us back there.’ We wanted to finish higher sophomore year, higher junior year, we had ups and downs as we went. But these three never changed. They had my back through it all and kept the culture going. I’m so honored that they are getting what I told them they could.” 

The resiliency required to reclimb the mountain pursuit of an opportunity in March makes it seem far more like a four-year journey for the players who have been with the program since the fall of 2022. They were a young team in that first season, though not without experience in their fold, as seniors Kaelyn Underwood and Jaylen Hoffman returned after contributing to the previous year’s tournament team. Those two, Heuker says, helped tremendously in a season that laid the foundation for the rest of her college career, one that has included 79 starts. 

“I always said Jay was our energy bunny,” Heuker, who is averaging 2.1 assists per game, said of Hoffman. “So I got to be able to watch her play point guard, be a guard, and learn from her defense. They were very good leaders and taught us how to take charge during our freshman year, so that when they were gone we could carry on their legacy and leadership [and pass it onto] the incoming freshmen. That definitely helped us to where we are now.” 

Along the way, JCU added three more members to its current senior class. Carly Perusek transferred in as a sophomore, and prior to last season, Graci Semptimphelter and Daylan Baker were incorporated into the mix. Together, the six seniors lead one of the most experienced teams in this year’s NCAA Tournament, a dynamic that both looks impressive on a scouting report and pays dividends in the flow of the game. 

Last season was the first in which all six of the current seniors shared the court, guiding JCU to a 19-7 record and a six-win improvement from 2023-24. So when Blue Streaks returned to prep for this winter, they were well aware there would be expectations to make the most of the veteran-heavy roster. It did not take long to see their optimism become reality. 

“From the end of last season we knew that we had something special going,” Ryncarz, JCU’s leading scorer at 14.5 points per game, said. “Seeing those first two games this season, we came away knowing we had the potential to do something really good. It was having that urgency from the beginning, recognizing, ‘We are capable of this.’ That comes down to every day in practice, continuing to remember we have a goal in mind. 

“For the group of seniors, now that we’re entering the tournament, it’s the last. We don’t know when the last game is going to be, so we have to have that urgency to play every game like it could be our last, and continue on with a great run that we have the chance to do. It’s really exciting to be with this group.” 

When Andrews considers the similarities between her last tournament team and this one, the presence of numerous upperclassmen on the roster is an obvious shared trait. But it goes a level deeper. They get the job done on the defensive end with an edge that is hard to beat. 

“The similarities are really the closeness and the grittiness of defense,” Andrews said. “When we had that group back then, Olivia Nagy and Nicole Heffington were paint defense blockers, and really handled that. With this group, we may not be as tall, but we are more aggressive on-ball, in passing lanes, and we’re able to speed people up.”

While JCU’s defense holds serve, it doesn’t always garner the headlines. Not when you have a team averaging 8.8 made 3-pointers per game, the fourth-most amongst teams in this year’s tournament. For as tenacious as the Blue Streak defense is, the offense has a finesse to it, marked by smooth ball movement and open shooters from beyond the arc on nearly every trip down the floor. 

Ryncarz is the go-to long-range option, ranking fifth in the country in 3-pointers this season, with 83. But as she noted earlier this week, she is certainly not the only one capable of knocking shots down from the 3-point line. 

“Everything plays off each other,” Ryncarz said. “When 3s are going in, that opens up the paint for my teammates. When we’re driving, [the defense] has to collapse and we get those open 3s. And it’s not just myself. Graci is another great shooter. Nicci Finazzo, Brooke Laub, Carmen will all knock down a 3 too. Knowing that other people can step up, it’s made it hard to guard. I think in years past, that’s what we were missing, having other people to step up. But since we have that this year, that’s allowed me to get some more shots. If a shot’s there and it’s open, I’m going to take it with confidence.”

It all works together as a fine-tuned machine, though not one bound by set plays or strict rules. There is freedom in JCU’s style of play, and the 3-point prowess certainly fits into that.

“I’m not a big playcalling coach,” Andrews said. “We’re very free. I like them to move bodies and move the ball. When they do that stuff, great things happen. Our 3-point shooting stands out, but I also think we get great scores because we play defense and we’re willing to push pace on the floor to make people scramble. If Carmen is pushing, and three people are chasing after her, she’s most likely going to be able to find a kick-out on the perimeter.” 

The regular season provided plenty of top-caliber opponents to put that style to the test, and in a year marked by JCU’s first national tournament appearance in five years, the Blue Streaks have enjoyed another significant piece of “newness” this winter: a new conference. JCU’s first year in the NCAC after a long run in the OAC coincided with a peak season for NCAC women’s hoops, as four teams earned their way into the NCAA Tournament field. Three of them — JCU, Denison, and Ohio Wesleyan — are hosting on opening weekend, while DePauw, who won the NCAC Tournament itself, heads to Waukesha, Wisconsin. 

It proved to be quite the introduction to the new league for Andrews’ team, who enters Friday’s first round matchup having played 10 games against tournament teams in conference play alone. The Blue Streaks notably beat Ohio Wesleyan in an NCAC semifinal for their first postseason victory since JCU’s 100-56 win over Elizabethtown in the 2022 NCAA Tournament, and battled DePauw in a tight 64-59 loss in the NCAC title game. 

“Nothing was easy,” Andrews said of going through the gauntlet of NCAC play. “In the games that we won this year that were close or in overtime, a lot of the huddle talk was, ‘We’ve been here before.’ I even hear my players in huddles before I’m there on the floor say, ‘We’re good’, because they’ve been prepped. They know they can finish the job in front of them because they’ve done it already. Even with the losses and with those overtime wins, it’s all prepared them to make a little bit of a run here.”

Should all go to plan, that will be the result. The chase for JCU’s return trip back to the tournament has been a years-long journey, one that has seen the program’s fourth-year seniors go from emerging talents to trusted leaders. On the cusp of the entire roster’s first tournament appearance, the Blue Streaks are ready to do whatever it takes to survive and advance. And they will do it together. 

“The four losses we’ve had this year, the room was quiet after,” Andrews said. “The room wanted it fixed immediately. Just that part of the culture that these two [Ryncarz and Heuker] have helped build is that they want excellence. That’s what my team had when we went; we were doing anything to win. When [the 2021-22 team] went, they wanted to do anything to win and do it together. 

“That’s what I see in this room everyday. I see Ava coming straight from student teaching to practice. Carmen is applying to PT/PA schools in the film room before practice starts. All of them have such bigger futures, and they’re also the ones in the gym shooting 10 free throws before they go. 

“It’s the reason we have the ability to host. And it’s the reason they put John Carroll back on the map.”