Cabrini Women's Hoops Tourney Bound For Fourth Straight Year

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- In what has become an annual occurrence as of late in Radnor, the Cabrini College women's basketball team is headed to the Division III NCAA Tournament.

Cabrini won the Colonial States Athletic Conference title for the fourth consecutive year to earn a spot in the field. The Cavaliers will take on Marymount University in the first round on Friday in Scranton.

Cabrini heads into the tournament with a record of 19-9, a ledger made even more impressive when you consider the Cavaliers opened the season with four straight losses.

"We knew it was going to be a journey all year and that we couldn't focus too much on some of the downs," Cabrini head coach Kate Pearson tells KYW Newsradio. "A season is about peaks and valleys, you can't be too high or too low. I think because we lost a couple pieces over the last two years to graduation, we had a lot of the pieces there, it was just having our players come into new roles. You really saw that as we got into February and postseason, that there were players that were starting to click and step up, and the leadership of our four seniors has been tremendous."

Listen to the entire interview with Cabrini's Kate Pearson:

One of those seniors is guard Meghan Martin who leads the team in scoring at 13.6 points per game. The Cavaliers really hang their hat on defense. This season they are holding opponents to 53.9 points a game and 35.3% shooting from the field.

Given that this is the fourth straight NCAA Tournament appearance for the Cavaliers, many of the key members of this team, led by the seniors, are familiar with the drill and know what it takes to prepare for these win-or-go-home match-ups.

"I think that's something that we will rely on again," Pearson says. "We'll keep going back to the fact that we've been here. We've been here four years in a row and these four seniors were a part of the first NCAA (Tournament) win in program history (in 2014). I'm sure they made history by winning four straight conference championships and I'm sure they'd like to add to their resume as they head out the door."

Cabrini will take on a Marymount team in the first round that hails from Arlington, Virginia, and the Capital Atlantic Conference. The Saints are 22-5 this season and they also can really defend. Marymount holds opponents to 47.1 points per game and 34.2% shooting from the field.

The winner of the Cabrini/Marymount match-up will take on the winner of WPI and the host team Scranton in round two on Saturday.

Friday's first round game tips off at 5:00pm.