After last season was abruptly canceled because of poor performance, the Bucks women’s basketball team is working on reestablishing itself, with new coaches and a steady approach.

In August, Brian Tumpowsky was named head coach of the women’s team. Tumpowsky was the assistant coach of the Bucks men’s team in the 2022-2023 season in which Bucks won the ECAC district championship and had a record of 11 wins to five losses.

Tumpowsky has more experience as a women’s coach, having led a girls’ amateur athletic union team for nine years. In November, he announced the hiring of a new assistant coach, Ebony Johnson, from Mercer County, NJ, who played basketball in high school and briefly in community college.

“Our goals right now are less about wins and losses. ‘Win a game’ was one of our goals. We achieved that. Hopefully in, say, three years, our goal will be to win the championship.” said Tumpowsky. The team now holds a record of one win to four losses.

Speaking on his coaching philosophy, Tumpowsky noted that different players require different kinds of instruction. “Some people respond really well to a coach being hard on them, and they use that to get better. But other people just shut down, and it’s ineffective,” he said.

Bucks being a two-year school competing against four-year schools remains a continual challenge, leading to high turnover in players and coaches. “We’re still learning how to play together. We’ve played against some well-established teams—so we’re like a car that’s designed to go 35 mph, and we’re pushing it to 90. We’re getting better game by game,” said Tumpowsky.

As evidence of the team’s gradual improvement, in their first game of the season, they lost to Central Penn by 69 points with a final score of 87 to 18—whereas, in their most recent game, they lost by only 25 points to Rowan Collage South Jersey-Cumberland with a final score of 69 to 44.

“We’re trying to give our full 40 minutes of effort and be relentless—that’s really difficult with a small team,” said Tumpowsky.

The team is composed of eight players, and its highest scorers are Martina Fedor, a freshman from Hamilton, NJ who averages 3.5 points per game and Caramia Delucia, a freshman from Quakertown who averages three points per game.

Describing the recruitment process, Tumpowsky said, “We’re a commuter school, so we mostly contact high school coaches in this area and ask them about players we might be interested. We also held an open gym where we found somebody we’re keeping our eyes on. But it would be hard to get somebody to relocate for the team.”

Though Tumpowsky himself was not much involved with recruiting this season’s team, he is confident in his players’ abilities, saying, “This year our challenge is more in numbers. We’ve got more skill, but fewer players.”