Feb. 28, 2010

by Lana Morelli

The Saint Joseph's women's basketball team earned its first postseason bids in the late 1970s, including the 1979 season under then first-year head coach Jim Foster. It wasn't until 1984-1985 that Saint Joseph's made it into the NCAA Tournament - a huge accomplishment, especially for that time, because only 32 teams made the NCAA postseason (compared to present day, when 64 teams make it in).

There was a "nucleus of young players and veterans at the time, which boded well for the future," Foster said. The 1984-1985 Hawks won all three in-season tournaments they took part in: The Dole Pineapple Classic, The Loyola College Tournament and The La Salle Invitational. Coach Foster recalled some of the standout moments of that year.

"Winning the La Salle tournament, coming back from a very large deficit against Iowa and beating South Carolina State...playing a terrific game against Penn State and winning against Oklahoma with only two seconds left on the clock...all of that made it such an exciting season," he said.

Debbie Black, a future Saint Joseph's Athletics Hall of Famer, was a freshman during the 1984-1985 season. She eventually went on to play professional basketball for 18 years - in Australia for nine years and in the ABL and WNBA for the Colorado Xplosion, Miami Sol and Connecticut Sun for nine years - but her highly competitive basketball career started at Hawk Hill during the 1984-1985 season.

"I didn't really know a whole lot about how college basketball worked," she said. "Coming in from high school as freshmen you're just going along for the ride and it was very, very exciting. We were winning a lot of games."

Out of 30 games that year, the team lost only five.

"I was just a kid who liked to play basketball. I was used to winning, but I had no idea the impact that that season would have," Black said.

According to Black, the camaraderie of the team was a contributing factor to the team's success.

"We had great leadership, which was huge, and we did a lot of things together, on and off the court," she said. "It was the best and one of the most fun years I ever had playing. The team was so good."

"That was a very good team and the expectation through the course of the year was that we would be in the NCAA Tournament because we had good solid wins throughout the season," Foster said.

The Saint Joseph's University women's basketball team was the Atlantic 10 regular season co-champion and won the Big 5 (4-0). More importantly, the team exceeded the expectations placed on them and the 1984-1985 year was the first time that Saint Joseph's women's basketball earned a bid to the NCAA Tournament (25-5).

It was a groundbreaking year for women's basketball at SJU. At the end of the season the team ranked 15th nationally in winning percentage (.833), 22nd nationally in scoring margin (+ 13.3), 23rd nationally in field goal percentage (49.2), and 29th nationally in scoring defense (61.9). This extraordinary team also began a trend for Saint Joseph's to be a frequent contender for NCAA tournament berths.

It was a "very enjoyable year, with good solid players, which is evident in the success that group has had after college basketball," Foster notes. It will be commemorated this Sunday on Hawk Hill as Saint Joseph's honors its first NCAA Tournament team.