As the lone Bearcat beginning her fourth season on the Binghamton women’s basketball team, senior guard Meghan Casey brings an unmatched degree of experience to the Bearcats this season. Entering her second year under head coach Mary Grimes, Casey feels the team has put in the necessary work this summer to build a cohesive identity and a collaborative team.

“We had a great summer,” Casey said. “We had a lot of team bonding activities and [Grimes] built a culture here, and the freshmen did a great job coming in and gelling right away. We had a lot of fun, and we’re continuing to play fast and learn how to play together on the court.”

Following a sophomore campaign where Casey appeared in all 31 of Binghamton’s games and started six, she saw a reduced role in her junior year. She appeared in 26 of 30 games and started none as her minute count dropped by over 30 percent. Despite this, Casey’s scoring efficiency improved, posting career bests in field goal percentage at 34.6 and three-point shooting at 33.3 percent.

After three seasons with Binghamton, Casey is the longest tenured Bearcat. During her time at Binghamton, she has developed a learned leadership strategy from previous captains and team leaders.

“I’m looking to be vocal,” Casey said. “I’ve seen in the past, [being] vocal is a big part of it, and just being together on and off the court is a huge part and just bringing that leadership every day and showing what you want to put out there, which is working hard.”

After opening the 2024-25 campaign with an 8-5 nonconference record before fighting to a 3-1 record through four games in America East play, the Bearcats closed out the season on a losing 8-4 run. Binghamton narrowly earned the final slot in the AE playoffs from a conference tiebreaker over UMBC, due to a pair of head-to-head victories. Casey totaled 14 points, four rebounds and two assists between the two games.

Despite the early exit, Casey said she believes the team is in a much stronger position than last season.

“We’re definitely a lot stronger,” Casey said. “We built more chemistry, we know how [Grimes] wants us to play a lot better and we kind of just built a foundation here and a culture, like I said. [Grimes] said it — we work hard together, we play together, we want to win, we want to play fast and everyone’s in it together, which is the biggest part.”

Despite her status as co-captain and the senior-most member of the squad, Casey has found that Binghamton’s six incoming freshmen have helped the team by bringing a youthful energy.

“It’s keeping us young, it’s keeping us alive,” Casey said. “They want to play, they want to have fun and they want to move. So it’s been great having them and learning and gelling with them together.”

Casey looks to reprise her playmaking role from her sophomore campaign, where she ranked 11th in the AE with 2.4 assists per game. She believes the Bearcats can significantly improve upon their .500 finish as the team’s identity and community continue to grow.

“We want to build off that a lot more and have an even more positive ratio and get more wins, because we can do it this year and we’re all in this together,” Casey said.