Hope College was unable to get revenge for its loss to the Washington University women’s basketball team in the 2010 national championship game.

The No. 12 Bears upset host and No. 4 Hope 56-52 on Saturday night in the second round of the 2011 Division III NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship in Holland, Mich.

One night after a 71-55 defeat of previously unbeaten, No. 10 Denison University, Wash. U. continued its hot shooting to defeat the Flying Dutch, who had defeated the Bears in a neutral site game on Dec. 29.

“You go into [the] season with goals of winning [the University Athletic Association], winning a national championship, and you always say it out loud, but you don’t actually know if it can happen,” senior Alex Hoover said. “And I think winning at Hope really gives us this confidence to know that if we can beat Hope, we can beat almost any other team because they’re such a great team.”

Making the win even bigger was the fact that it took place on Hope’s home court, where the Flying Dutch previously held a 76-game winning streak.

“It was actually really exciting. I think they had maybe 2,000 fans there, so it was a packed house and very loud,” junior Dani Hoover said. “We had quite a few fans of our own, so it was nice to kind of quiet the crowd at the end of the game.”

Like the teams’ contest earlier this year, a 49-47 Hope victory, the game was a low-scoring, defensive struggle. Alex Hoover single-handedly carried the team at the game’s outset, scoring its first 11 points on a layup and three three-pointers.

“We knew all week that Hope was a very, very good defensive team, and they put a lot of pressure on, and so I just went into the game thinking, ‘If I have an open shot, if I have just a little bit of space, I need to take these shots,’” she said. “And I think that the whole team kind of followed this philosophy, and it ended up working well for us.”

The Bears held a slim lead for most of the first half, leading by six with 1:53 left before a pair of free throws and a three-pointer from Hope brought the Wash. U. lead to one at the half, 27-26.

Both teams had some trouble scoring to open up the second half. With Flying Dutch ahead 35-34 with 11:50 remaining, the Bears made their move. Dani Hoover put up seven points in a row for the team—including a four-point play—and senior Monika Monson gave the Bears a 43-37 lead with another basket.

They would never trail again after that.

“When Dani hit that big three and got fouled, you could just feel the momentum shift, and you could see it in the stands, and we were getting more and more hyped up because they were getting more and more nervous,” senior Kathryn Berger said.

Though Hope did get the lead down to one with 8:38 remaining in regulation, baskets by sophomore Kristin Anda and Berger gave Wash. U. some breathing room, and Dani Hoover had another huge scoring burst, scoring the team’s final eight points to bring the lead to 56-46. Hope hit a pair of three-pointers in the closing seconds, but time ran out, and the Bears celebrated their biggest victory of the season.

“You could kind of feel us trying to pull away, but we couldn’t quite get there, so when Dani finally hit that three-pointer from the corner and we were finally up by nine, we kind of had the game, and we had the confidence that we were going to most likely win,” Alex Hoover said.

Though they only shot 37.5 percent from the floor, the Bears went 9 for 19 from three-point range and outrebounded Hope, 50-38. Alex and Dani Hoover led the team with 16 and 15 points, respectively. Anda contributed eight more, and Berger had six to go with her team-high 10 rebounds.

On Friday, the team bounced back from a poor effort in its final regular-season game to overwhelm Denison, which was undefeated on the season. The Bears took a double-digit lead in the first half and never looked back, shooting 58.3 percent from behind the arc and 51.1 percent overall. Berger and Alex Hoover led the way with 11 points apiece on the game.

The Bears will head home before going to the gym of top-ranked Thomas More College, which sports a 30-0 record going into NCAA third-round game on Friday. Despite the challenge, the Bears are highly confident after taking out an undefeated team and ending a 76-game home winning streak in consecutive days.

“I’m excited for it,” Berger said. “Coming out of this bracket is going to be hard work. I think that with each team we face, we just get better, and we’re working toward our ultimate goal, and who wants to go to the Final Four or the Elite Eight and not have faced the best competition? So I’m excited.”