Pittsburg State enters D-II women’s Elite Eight on two-month roll

This all started in a video room.

The 15-game winning streak to end the regular season. The march through the regional tournament. The trip to the program’s second Elite Eight.

All from a team that was expected to do this last season, certainly not this time with this team. But the Pittsburg State women’s basketball team will tell you all of this was made possible after that day in the video room.

It was the day after an 18-point loss to Central Missouri on Jan. 7, which dropped the team’s conference record to 5-4. When the team met to watch the video, the team’s two seniors, Cathy Brugman and Kylie Gafford, vowed the underachieving play would end that very day.

“That’s the day they stepped up and became the leaders that they are today,” Pitt State coach Lane Lord said. “As a coach, you can only do so much. Sometimes it has to come from within the players. That was the moment that turned our season into this championship run.”

Since that day, Pittsburg State (29-5) has won 17 of 18 games, setting the school record for wins, and advanced to play Grand Valley State (25-9) in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Division II tournament at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday in Sioux Falls, S.D.

It’s been pure euphoria in the days following the 78-74 victory over rival Emporia State in the Central Regional championship game, but the players can still trace back their success to that fateful Friday morning.

“I think that was the defining moment of our season,” Brugman said. “We didn’t want our season to go like that, so we decided to fight. We knew we had the potential to win a lot of games, so we just made a promise to each other to play every game like its our last and that’s when things turned around.”

Where did that passion suddenly come from?

Players said they were stunned when they watched the video of the loss. The effort was lacking, the chemistry was non-existent, and the body language was poor.

Lord had his players keep a running tally of every time they believed they had not exerted the maximum effort on a play that could have helped the team. When the team went to the court, players had to run an up-and-down sprint for every tally on the list.

It was a grueling hour of running, but everyone could already sense the change that was underway.

“It finally hit us then,” junior guard Paige Lungwitz said. “I think we stopped feeling sorry for ourselves and started picking each other up and started believing in one another.”

What has followed has surprised even Lord. Pitt State had a veteran team last season with expectations of this, but this season Lord only had three known commodities entering the season and a bench full of freshmen and sophomores.

But the team, which has plenty of Wichita flavor with Brugman (Bishop Carroll), Lungwitz (Maize), Shelby Lopez (Carroll), and Madison Northcutt (South) all playing roles, has played so well together that Lord doesn’t hesitate to call it the team with the most chemistry he’s coached.

“We’re not the most talented team and we’re not going to win the all-airport team when we step off the plane,” Lord said. “But this team has more chemistry than I’ve ever seen and that’s what makes this run really special. It’s almost like having 14 sisters out there.”

And now they are three wins away from a championship.

“This team is unlike any other team I’ve ever been,” said Brugman, who scored 31 and 27 points the last two games. “We’ve always had that fire under us because we know we might not be the most athletic or the most talented, but I think we want it more than anyone else and that’s what drives us.”

This story was originally published March 21, 2016 at 2:57 PM with the headline "Pittsburg State enters D-II women’s Elite Eight on two-month roll."