The University of Scranton Lady Royals on Sunday recorded one of the greatest wins in the rich history of the women’s basketball program.
Ranked No. 2 in the NCAA Division III ranks, according to the D3hoops.com preseason poll, the Lady Royals traveled to play at the University of Pittsburgh and beat the Panthers, 69-63.
Elizabeth Bennett ’27, a 5-foot-11 center from Staten Island, New York, was Scranton’s leading scorer with 15 points and five rebounds.
Bennett reflected below, as told to University communications, on the rare experience of playing against a Division I ACC opponent — and the even more remarkable feat of beating that team.
One of the hallmarks of our team is that we are steady.
If we are on a run, if the other team is on a run — and it’s inevitable, basketball is a sport of runs — it doesn’t matter. We just want to stay as steady as possible, no matter the circumstances.
On Sunday, the circumstances were evident on the scoreboard. We were up 10 at halftime. We were down six after three quarters. And even though we were playing against a great opponent in an amazing arena, we just had to remind ourselves to stay steady.
The opponent, of course, was Pitt. We were back on campus this fall for two or three weeks when we got the news that we’d be playing Pitt. We were all really excited but a little nervous, too.
And the arena was the Petersen Events Center. Last year, we had a winter tournament at Daytona Beach, Florida, and that was the biggest arena I’d ever played in. It was more of a convention center, though, so getting to play at Pitt was going to be special.
A couple days before the game, we went over film and stats. We knew we’d be at a size disadvantage. However, even going back to travel basketball, you play against bigger girls all the time and just have to remind yourself that this is something you’ve done before.
When we got on the bus Saturday morning at 7 a.m., I definitely had some nerves bouncing around. We knew it would be a great opportunity to play against good competition, no matter if we won or lost.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source news.scranton.edu ’
