By Jim Fenton
BRIDGEWATER, Mass. -- The bright lights of Las Vegas, Nev., are waiting for the Bridgewater State University men's and women's basketball teams.
The two Bears' squads are heading to Vegas on Friday morning where they will play two games each next week at the D3hoops.com Classic, hosted by the South Point Hotel & Casino.
The teams leave for Nevada the day after Christmas and will be back home next Wednesday morning after flying overnight.
It marks the first time since the 2011-12 season that the men's and women's teams are traveling together on a semester break trip. They went to Daytona Beach, Fla., for the Land of Magic Classic 14 years ago.
Both teams had to do plenty of fund-raising over the past year in order to have enough money for the airfare and hotels.
"I think it will be great," said women's coach Bridgett Casey. "We'll be at each other's games and it will be nice for both teams."
The Bears will first play on Sunday with the women facing Whittier College of Whittier, Calif., at 5 p.m. Eastern time while the men will also go against Whittier at 7 p.m.
The second game for each team is next Tuesday with the women playing at 3 p.m. against the University of Redlands from California and the men meeting Central College of Iowa at 7 p.m.
There will be plenty of time for sightseeing during the four-night stay for the BSU teams and the rest of the traveling party.
Some will be going to the Sphere to see the Wizard of Oz, ride on the roller coaster at the New York-New York Hotel Casino, tour The Strip, visit the Stratosphere and Fremont Street in old Las Vegas along with the Pinball Hall of Fame.
The BSU men's team played in the D3hoops.com Classic in Vegas during the 2013-14 season. This is the 15th year that the event is being held at the South Point.
Assistant coach Brian Ferris was on that trip 12 years ago and made the suggestion to men's coach Matt McLaughlin to make a return trip.
"Brian Ferris is the one who started it all," said McLaughlin. "They had gone to Vegas with coach (Joe) Farroba and coach (Mike) Donovan, and coach Ferris raved about it. He said it was a really good take.
"It's super convenient, the arena is right in the hotel and you're in Vegas, which is obviously a different experience."
After the men's team made the decision to play in Las Vegas, McLaughlin invited the women's team to join them.
McLaughlin worked as an assistant coach to Casey for seven seasons.
"We pretty much kept asking and bugging coach Casey to come," said McLaughlin. "It didn't take much to pull her arm. Coach Casey and I have a really good relationship and we'd knew it be fun for both teams."
Casey was somewhat hesitant at first since her teams had traveled to Hawaii in the 2023-24 season and to Puerto Rico in the 2024-25 season.
The women's team usually goes away every other year, so this would mean three straight seasons of raising money for a semester break journey.
"It's a lot of hard work to raise the money to go,'' said Casey. "They have to do a lot to raise funds for the flights and to stay there.
"Matt came to me and told me about Vegas and I wound up saying, "Let's go.' When you play here, you usually get two trips out of your four years. Some of them are getting three.''
While the women are traveling for the fourth time in five seasons, the men's team has not gone away during the semester break since 2022 when they played in Guilford, N.C.
"Everyone has been excited all year for this,'' said senior Louis Jennings (Walpole, Mass.) of the men's team. "It's going to be a cool opportunity to travel with the team and play somewhere else and look around Vegas. It should definitely be a good team bonding trip.
"I think going with the women's team will be good. There'll be a lot of Bridgewater people there."
Said Zach Taylor (Quincy, Mass.), a junior on the men's team, "It's a great experience for everyone in Bridgewater basketball and athletics. I'm definitely excited to see what it's like out there."
Both BSU teams are off to slow starts with the men having a 1-8 record and the women are 1-6.
The men are on their second four-game losing streak while the women are on a six-game slide after winning their season opener.
The trip to Las Vegas comes not long before the teams open the Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference schedule, so the Bears are hoping this will serve as a springboard.
"Honestly, we're going through a tough semester right now," said McLaughlin. "We didn't expect to be where we are right now. I think it's a good thing to be together in a different space.
"The biggest thing is being together. Hopefully we can come together a little more and start to dig ourselves out of this."
BSU's first opponent, Whittier, is 7-2 with a three-game winning streak going into Las Vegas. A member of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, Whittier is led by Jonathan Duley, who scores 20.4 points a game and shoots 49 percent from 3-point range.
Two days later, the Bears men's team will face Central, which is 5-5 and a member of the American Rivers Conference.
BSU is expected to have junior Josh Campbell (Plymouth, Mass.) in the lineup for the first time this season. Campbell was injured in the preseason.
Campbell led the Bears with a 17.6 scoring average and made the All-MASCAC second team last season after scoring 12.3 points as a freshman.
"I think it's going to be great for us," said Taylor. "It's right before conference play and we are all going to be together for a couple of days. It'll be great for us to grow that bond off the court, which will only make us better on the court."
The last time BSU's men's team went to Las Vegas, it was 2-0 with wins over Ramapo and Linfield by a combined six points.
The women's team defeated UMass Dartmouth on Nov. 12 and has not won since.
They open in Las Vegas against Whittier, which is 3-4 with a four-game losing streak. The second game is against Redlands, also a SCIAC member which is 6-1 with a four-game winning streak.
"We've had a tough strength of schedule," said Casey. "It is what it is. We're looking at everyone to get better and get ready for conference play on this trip."
The women will play another non-conference game at Smith College on Jan. 3 before opening the MASCAC schedule on Jan. 7.
"I think it'll be good to play against teams we know absolutely nothing about when we go (to Las Vegas)," said women's junior guard Sophie Bradbury (East Bridgewater, Mass.). "We're going in open minded and ready to work.
"It'll be so much fun. With the traveling, the activities that the coaches plan, the teams get a lot of out of it bonding wise."
The South Point Hotel & Casino has a 4,600-seat arena where all the games will be played.
The BSU teams will be joined in Las Vegas by other New England schools,including the Amherst College men plus the Amherst, Wesleyan and Salve Regina women's teams.