A few days before the Massachusetts’ women’s basketball team’s regular-season opener on Nov. 25, coach Tory Verdi called Sam Breen into his office for a private 1-on-1 meeting. Breen likely knew what to expect from the conversation — a new season was fast approaching and expectations were high. She was a senior captain, so leadership responsibilities would fall on her shoulders.
But as the conversation continued to unfold, Verdi also mentioned something else that caught Breen completely by surprise.
“I think Sam has the opportunity to become the best to ever play here at UMass,” Verdi said in an interview with the Post-Gazette this week. “Yeah, I really do.”
Without the slightest semblance of exaggeration in his voice, Verdi told Breen exactly that.
“I had my mask on, but my jaw definitely still dropped,” she said with a laugh. “I was shocked by it.”
Given her emergence this season, it appears Verdi’s assessment was accurate. Through eight games, Breen holds season averages of 19.3 points, 9.3 rebounds, 1.25 steals and nearly 1 block per game while shooting 52% from the field, 39% from three and 85% at the free-throw line.
The 6-foot-1 forward has four double-doubles in her past four outings, which earned Atlantic 10 Player of the Week honors on Monday, and has paced the Minutewomen (6-2, 2-1) on both ends of the floor during a five-game winning streak that ended Tuesday night with a one-point loss to Rhode Island. Against La Salle on Sunday, she had a 25-point, 13-rebound performance, and Tuesday night she ended up with 11 points and 11 rebounds.
“Those stats in itself are unreal,” said Verdi, before doubling down on his claim. “I truly believe that with this season and then two more years to go, she could end up as the best player to have ever worn a UMass jersey.”
Breen’s path to this point has been anything but easy or straight and narrow. She started her career at Penn State but struggled to find her footing and transferred to a school 10 hours away from home. She ran scout team for a year while sitting out of games due to NCAA transfer rules, and then — just as normalcy was about to return — got hit with the ripple effects of a global pandemic that turned her first real full season into an ongoing cycle of uncertainty.
Through each twist and turn, however, Breen never let herself become a victim of circumstance. And now she’s in a position to chase greatness because of it.
“I think she’s the best scoring forward in the A-10,” said Verdi. “A lot of that has to do with her desire to. She’s one of our hardest workers with the time she has spent in the gym developing her skill and her craft. She does all the work behind the scenes. The success that she’s having, there’s a reason for it.”
Breen’s most notable moment of the young season came on Dec. 13 against St. John’s, where in the final seconds of a tie score, it was her buzzer-beating put-back layup off a missed shot that gave the Minutewomen an invigorating 63-61 win against a Big East opponent. The sequence made for a wild finish that made it to No. 5 on SportsCenter’s Top-10 Plays of the Day.
That. Just. HAPPENED!
— UMass Women's Basketball (@UMassWBB) December 13, 2020
Sam Breen puts it home at the buzzer and UMass defeats St. John's!#Flagship???? pic.twitter.com/1NNuc0ibNb
“Before Maddie [Sims] shot the free throw, Sydney [Taylor] and I just looked at each other and knew we needed to crash the glass,” said Breen. “I was in the right position and was just lucky to get it off the backboard in time.”
However, it actually wasn’t the first occasion that Breen’s clutch gene made an appearance.
“As soon as the ball went up, I knew we were going to win the game,” said Verdi. “I had seen it before — she did something similar against Dayton last season. She just has an unbelievable ability to find where the ball is in certain situations.”
Breen originally flashed that ability at North Catholic High, garnering Pennsylvania’s 2017 Gatorade Player of the Year award as a senior after amassing 2,500 total points in her high school career. After her stint at Penn State didn’t work out, the Gibsonia native stepped out of her comfort zone and took a chance on Verdi and his staff — arriving in Amherst in January 2019 to begin her own version of a reclamation project.
Breen had lost her passion for the game of basketball somewhere in the hills of Happy Valley, but the newfound opportunity at UMass offered a chance to rekindle the missing fire inside her. She spent the next year rebuilding her confidence, refining her skill set, learning the mental side of basketball and acclimating to Verdi’s new system in practice. Slowly but surely, under Verdi’s guidance, the spark returned.
“It was the best decision of my life coming here,” Breen said. “I didn’t think I was going to love the sport of basketball after struggling with it [at Penn State]. I didn’t believe I’d find my passion and love for the game again.”
The past 13 months have proved otherwise. Breen received NCAA eligibility in December 2019 and appeared in 20 games (11 starts) over the latter half of the 2019-20 season, averaging 16 points and 7 rebounds in 32 minutes per game. The pandemic forced her to spend the ensuing summer at home in Pittsburgh without access to UMass’ training and player development programs, but she stayed in shape with long-distance conditioning, ball-handling drills and shooting sessions at local gyms. After seven long months, she returned to UMass on Sept. 6 and took off running.
Overall, Breen is far from a finished product. She’ll be the first to tell you about her mid-range game she wants to develop, defensive techniques she needs to improve and her desire to grow as a team leader. But above anything else, it’s evident that Breen’s reignited flame for the game of basketball now rages like a forest fire, restoring the old version of herself that used to dominate the WPIAL landscape on a nightly basis. In fact, that Sam Breen never really left — she just needed the right situation around her.
“I’m in love with the game more than I’ve ever been before,” said Breen. “It makes all the difference for me.”
First Published: January 6, 2021, 12:00 p.m.