PSU-Abington WBB's Remarkable Turnaround Lands Them In D3 NCAA Tourney

By Matt Leon

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- The PSU-Abington women's basketball team had a season to forget in 2011-12. The Nittany Lions went 0-24.

The next two seasons weren't much better as PSU-Abington won a combined 14 games while losing 32.

So few people expected much here in 2014-15. Few people that is except the PSU-Abington team itself and second-year head coach Stephanie Carideo. The Nittany Lions have gone 22-5 this season, won the North Eastern Athletic Conference title and earned the first-ever Division III NCAA Tournament berth in program history. They get quite the trip for their first tourney appearance as they travel cross county to Newberg, Oregon, to match-up with 27-0 George Fox University in the first round on Friday night.

"It's been quite a journey, it's been quite a year," Carideo tells KYW Newsradio. "I've been blessed with 12 girls that I absolutely adore and love. It's been a remarkable season."

Listen to the entire interview with PSU-Abington's Stephanie Carideo

PSU-Abington won six of its first seven games this season, but Carideo, who played in the Division II Tourney as a standout guard at Philadelphia University, says it was in the eighth game that she knew she had something pretty special.

"After we had beaten Lancaster Bible (on January 10th)," Carideo says. "Lancaster Bible's kind of the best team in our league, the team to beat pretty much every single year. They are the hunted. We went into our game at home and they had won (27) consecutive NEAC games and we had gone in, pretty much being the underdog and saying that we're going to make this change. We're going to make the change in the NEAC and say that we want to now be the hunted and we want to be the one that every team's giving them their best. It was a huge, hard fought game for us and we ended up pulling out the win. I knew at that point, from a coaching standpoint, if we could fight through that and get through that, we had a pretty special group."

The Nittany Lions get it done with defense. In fact they are second in the nation in Division III in scoring defense, allowing just 46.6 points per game. Opponents shoot just 33% from the field against PSU-Abington and just 27% from three.

Senior guard Stephanie Keyes leads the way on offense for the Nittany Lions, scoring 17.2 points per game. She is closely followed by junior guard Janaiah Elum who scores at a clip of 16 points per contest.

George Fox is a tough draw for PSU-Abington. They are a perennial power in Division III women's basketball. They won it all back in 2009 and have advanced to the "Elite 8" of the tourney on five different occasions. They also have enjoyed 22 straight winning seasons.

Carideo says it is not hard to see why this year's team is ranked as high as #3 in the nation.

"They are tough," Carideo says. "They run a lot of good sets, they guard like no other."

Between the tournament berth and the trip to Oregon, this is an incredibly special time for this PSU-Abington squad. But Carideo says it is important that they keep their eye on the prize.

"This is all great," Carideo says. "Yes, we're getting on a plane. Some of (the players) have never even flown before, so this will be their first time flying. But the grand scheme of things is we're going over there to compete and win a basketball game."

PSU-Abington and George Fox will tip-off at 10:00pm (Eastern) on Friday night. The winner of this game gets the winner of Puget Sound and Claremont Mudd-Scripps in the second round on Saturday.

You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattleonkyw.