A city known primarily as the setting for “The Office” has captured the headlines for other reasons this week.
Upsets always provide some of the best moments in a college basketball season, but what the University of Scranton Lady Royals pulled off Sunday night is one of the greatest feats college basketball has seen. Scranton, a Division III program, earned a shocking 69-63 victory on the road at Pittsburgh, toppling the ACC opponent.
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According to the NCAA media coordination team in charge of record-keeping, the victory is the first-ever power-conference loss to a D-III team in collegiate women’s basketball history. ESPN Analytics’ win probability metric gave Scranton just a 0.1 percent chance to win before the game. But that didn’t stop the Lady Royals from entering Petersen Events Center with confidence.
“I think right away, when we were watching Pitt, we certainly had a lot of respect for them and their players and their coaches, but we did feel that we were going to be able to be very competitive with them,” Scranton coach Ben O’Brien said.
The game was technically an exhibition game for Scranton, a practice that often takes place for lower-division opponents when they are expected to lose. But it didn’t happen that way, and the defeat counts against Pitt’s record. The Lady Royals’ win over the Panthers is the first win over a Division I opponent in program history.
Scranton is no stranger to success under O’Brien. Last season, the team went 29-2 and reached the D-III Elite Eight. The Lady Royals fell 81-77 to University of Wisconsin-Stout in the quarterfinals. In 2023-24, they were 28-3 and also lost in the Elite Eight to eventual national champion NYU. Over their last three seasons, the Lady Royals have lost just six combined games and have lost a total of only 25 games over their last eight full seasons.
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Sunday, the Lady Royals took a 37-27 lead into halftime. The Panthers responded with a 23-7 third quarter to go in front 50-44. Scranton was far from done, however. They dominated the final period, finishing on a 25-13 sprint. At a time when the underdog team could have lost hope heading into the fourth quarter, the Lady Royals did no such thing. Their experience winning so many big games together helped down the stretch.
“We have experienced players who have not only experienced a lot of big games over the course of their careers, they’ve experienced a lot of big games together,” O’Brien said. “We have a core group of players that just have a great chemistry on the court, offensively and defensively. I just felt like our team was very, very well connected, offensively and defensively throughout the entire game.”
Junior Elizabeth Bennett was one of four double-figure scorers for Scranton, leading the team with 15 points on 6-of-8 shooting. The Lady Royals are 60-5 since Bennett joined the program.
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“Coach always tells us that there’s going to be adversity,” Bennett said. “It’s a matter of when, not if, that adversity is coming. So we knew that they were going to go on a run at some point. But we just needed to really focus on our defense, to get a defensive stop and use that stop to our advantage, to get the spark back up and get the clock back going and get control of the game again.”
Meanwhile, Pitt was 13-19 last year and finished 5-13 in conference. It has started the season 2-2. Though the two programs are going in different directions, the resource disparity makes Scranton’s achievement particularly remarkable. D-III athletes aren’t eligible for athletic scholarships, and though they are permitted to pursue name, image and likeness deals, those opportunities are often limited to nonexistent.
“I’m extremely proud of my teammates and myself, and just super grateful to be a part of the team at this time,” Bennett said. “We knew going into it that no matter if we’ve won or if we lost, that the opportunity itself was going to help us in some way. And I think it means a lot that we are getting recognition for this win because we do work really hard. I think there are a lot of underrated and a lot of talented players at the D-III level. I don’t want to take away from Pittsburgh’s talent at all. I just think it means a lot for D-III athletics in general.”
The accomplishment of beating a power-conference program as a D-III school is not only unprecedented in women’s basketball but also is exceedingly rare in men’s basketball as well. On Dec. 22, 1980, D-III Ohio Northern shocked Oklahoma 72-69. That is the only known example of a power-conference opponent losing to a D-III program on the men’s side.
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Two years later, Chaminade University, a school of 800 students in Hawaii, pulled off what is often considered the greatest upset in college basketball history. On Dec. 23, 1982, the Silverswords took down No. 1 Virginia 77-72 in Honolulu. However, Chaminade was competing as an NAIA school at the time.
O’Brien is hopeful Scranton’s triumph can highlight the talent present at the D-III level, which is often overlooked. Detroit Pistons forward Duncan Robinson has built an eight-year NBA career after beginning his career at D-III Williams College.
“The difference in terms of the talent from players from Division I to Division II to Division III can be very marginal,” O’Brien said. “I mean, it’s not an exact science. If you look at the WNBA or the NBA or the NFL, there are a lot of Hall of Fame players that were not powerful Division I performers prior to arriving there. So I think it’s just another example that there are a lot of very talented players everywhere who are just looking for an opportunity somewhere, and sometimes that’s at a place like Scranton. And people like that, players like that, when they do get an opportunity, will show what they can do.”
This article originally appeared in The Athletic.
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