Expand<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\nSALEM, Virginia \u2014 Kaeli Romanowski looked at the box score following the University of Scranton women\u2019s basketball team\u2019s 60-52 win over NYU on Thursday night in the NCAA Division III Final Four and was upset.<\/p>\n
She pointed out that she committed six turnovers and that the player she was responsible for guarding Olivia Lagao scored 14 points.<\/p>\n
Everyone else, however, looked at the other numbers the senior posted.<\/p>\n
Romanowski had one of the best performances in Scranton\u2019s NCAA tournament history to help the Lady Royals (32-0) advance to Saturday\u2019s national championship at Roanoke College\u2019s Cregger Center against Denison University (29-2).<\/p>\n
She scored a season-high 14 points, 10 of which came in the second half to help the Lady Royals withstand NYU\u2019s comeback attempt from a 12-point halftime deficit.<\/p>\n
Her 16 rebounds tied for the fifth-most by a Lady Royal in an NCAA tournament game. Una Espenkotter had 16 against Marywood on March 6, 1987, while Jackie Dougherty had 16 twice: March 5, 1993, against Waynesburg and March 11, 1994, against Babson. Shelley Parks holds the record with 23 against Salem State on March 9, 1985.<\/p>\n
Lastly, Romanowski\u2019s five steals tied for the fourth-most in an NCAA tournament game with six other players. Sophia Talutto also had five steals Thursday to join that group. Romanowski holds the record with nine steals last season against Bates.<\/p>\n
The performance Thursday came hours after she was named a Women\u2019s Basketball Coaches Association All-America honorable mention.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just glad everyone got a chance to see what we\u2019ve been seeing since she arrived at Scranton,\u201d Lady Royals coach Ben O\u2019Brien said. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen a player impact the game quite like Kaeli does. She had a Kaeli performance tonight. It just happened to be in the national semifinal. She\u2019s without a doubt one of the best players in the country. I was happy to see an All-American and (Thursday) she certainly backed up that well-deserved honor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Team effort<\/h4>\n
Scranton won Thursday night despite leading scorer Kaci Kranson having only five points.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you told me they put up 60 and she has five, it\u2019s a little surprising,\u201d NYU coach Meg Barber said.<\/p>\n
Kranson hit a 3-pointer late in the first quarter to give Scranton a 14-5 lead. Her other basket came late in the third quarter when she finished off a 2-on-1 with Romanowski off a steal to make it 47-34. She played just over 23 minutes and was 2 for 8 from the field, including 1 of 3 from 3-point range. She also grabbed three rebounds.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien, however, said Kranson contributed in other ways.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a total team effort,\u201d O\u2019Brien said. \u201cKaci obviously is an awesome player and draws a lot of attention. But what has made this team special this season is that we have a lot of other weapons out there. Kaci is smart enough and wise enough to understand that, hey, if I\u2019m drawing all this attention, somebody on my team has to be open. I thought Kaci did a great job. She\u2019s done that all year. Saturday, you never know who it\u2019s going to be. But Kaci Kranson has been one of, if not the best player to ever play here. She did everything we asked her to do (Thursday) and I expect her to have a monster game Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless of Saturday\u2019s outcome, it is the final game in a Scranton uniform for Kranson and fellow seniors Romanowski and Jenna Sloan. Kranson, who was named a WBCA All-American on Thursday, entered Saturday\u2019s game with 1,992 career points, which ranks second in Lady Royals history.<\/p>\n
Streaks and stuff<\/h4>\n
In November, the Lady Royals drew a lot of media attention for knocking off Division I University of Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
They were back in the spotlight Thursday. Stopping NYU\u2019s historic 91-game winning streak was reported on by both national and New York media outlets. The Violets had not lost since March 11, 2023, to Transylvania in the Elite Eight. It was the second-longest streak in NCAA basketball history, men\u2019s or women\u2019s, behind only UConn\u2019s 111-game streak from Nov. 23, 2014 to March 31, 2017.<\/p>\n
According to a post on X by Riley Zayas, publisher of d3wbbscoop.substack.com, the Lady Royals now hold the third-longest active winning streak in NCAA women\u2019s basketball at 32. UConn (34-0) is first at 50 games heading into its NCAA Division I tournament first-round opener Saturday against Texas-San Antonio. Colorado Mesa University (36-1) is second, taking a 33-game streak into the NCAA Division II Elite Eight on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Hey, Mr. Scott<\/h4>\n
Here is an interesting connection between Saturday\u2019s finalists Denison and Scranton.<\/p>\n
Actor Steve Carell is a 1984 graduate of Denison. Carell played Michael Scott on the popular TV series \u201cThe Office\u201d about fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin based in Scranton.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.thetimes-tribune.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meghan Lamanna of the University of Scranton eyes up a free throw during the NCAA Division III semifinal against NYU on Thursday night in Salem, Virginia. Katie Gorski of the University of Scranton goes in for a layup against NYU during the NCAA Division III semifinal game Thursday night in Salem, Virginia. Show Caption 1 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2340122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[350851,21848],"class_list":["post-2340121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-college-sports","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Romanowski-had-game-for-Lady-Royals-record-book-\u2013-Scranton-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2340121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2340123,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2340121\/revisions\/2340123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2340122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2340121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2340121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2340121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}