Preparation, teamwork have Seton Hill women's basketball team perfect after 10 games

For her second season as the Seton Hill women’s basketball coach, Maeve Gallagher wanted to increase the degree of difficulty in the Griffins’ nonconference schedule. The goal, of course, was to prepare them for the rigors of the PSAC West.

So Gallagher loaded up the front of the schedule, opening the season against No. 7 Fairmont State in the Mountain East/PSAC Challenge at Lock Haven. Early nonconference foes also included Frostburg State, which was picked to finish second behind Fairmont State in the MEC; Millersville and Kutztown, picked to finish 3-4 in the PSAC East; Malone, picked to finish second in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference; and Virginia State, which won 23 games last season and was picked to finish third in the 12-team CIAA.

A pretty demanding schedule by any measure.

Except, perhaps, Seton Hill’s record.

After their 89-72 victory over Kutztown on Dec. 7, the Griffins entered a 10-day break at 10-0. They averaged 86.3 points in those 10 games, breaking 100 twice, including putting up 120 against Concord. They were outscoring their opponents by an average of 17 points.

“We’ve risen to the challenge and just worked on treating each game as an individual game,” Gallagher said. “We’re focusing more on ourselves this year, which has been very self-serving for us.”

Having more time to work with the team, Gallagher said, has been a game-changer.

Last season, she was hired at 11 a.m. Aug. 23, and workouts started at 7 a.m. the next day. So Gallagher and her staff had to pick and choose how they spent their time in preparing the players for the season. The result was a .500 record in the PSAC West (11-11) and a 14-15 overall mark.

Coming from a family of coaches, Gallagher knew the importance of preparation. With a full offseason to work with the group, she hoped for better results.

“What I’m getting now is validity from all the old heads who have been telling me all these years that preparation is key,” said Gallagher, whose father, Bill, coached football at Perry and W&J. Her uncle, Johnny Lee, is a longtime WPIAL basketball coach. “We had much more time to prepare.

“We had to become a tougher team. The underdog mentality was only pushing us so far, and we challenged (the players) to embrace a bigger role of us in this league.”

To increase the players’ fortitude, she enlisted the help of some local Marines. Every Thursday for six weeks over the summer, the players would convene at Seton Hill’s athletic fields to go through a series of Marine-led drills and exercises.

Fifth-year guard Christiane Frye said not only did the regimen push the players physically, it emphasized the importance of teamwork.

“It taught us a ton of toughness and brought us together so much,” said Frye, a two-time first-team All-PSAC West guard. “Anything we did had to be in unison, very much like Marines.”

That teamwork has been evident. Four players are averaging double-figure scoring: Frye 17.6, junior Helene Cowan 14.7, sophomore Mia Kalich 13.7 (to go with 9.3 rebounds and 4.0 steals per game) and junior Hallie Cowan 12.5.

The balanced scoring is the result of the team’s willingness to share the ball. Five players have at least 18 assists: Helene Cowan 35, Frye 33, Kalich 30, Abby Mankins (Greensburg Salem) 22 and Hallie Cowan 18.

Gallagher pointed to Kalich’s emergence as one of the big factors in the Griffins’ success. The 5-foot-11 forward has doubled her scoring average of a year ago, increased her rebounds by nearly three per game and has almost as many steals (40) through 10 games as she had in 29 games last season (49).

She has been the PSAC West Defensive Player of the Week three times.

“We had a conversation at the end of last year,” Gallagher said about Kalich. “What do you want your future to look like here? If you want it to be a bigger role, then there has to be some offensive gains in the offseason. … She worked her tail off all summer long, and it showed the second she was back here on campus.”

Added Frye: “Honestly, Mia’s game is speaking for itself. … Her length alone is creating so much chaos for the other teams, and she’s another offensive scoring threat. She’s really been a motor for us.”

If Kalich has been the chaos, Mankins has been the stability. Though she doesn’t put up eye-popping numbers, the junior has been, perhaps, the Griffins’ most steady player.

“She has a very good poker face,” Frye said. “She’s very even, and she’s kind of our rock when things start to get a little chaotic.”

Mankins’ demeanor has rubbed off on her teammates. The Griffins have managed to keep a collective “poker face” even when something is off. Gallagher said they aren’t letting struggles in one area of their game to bleed over into another.

“They have proven they can make big mistakes and still have the composure to correct them as opposed to letting them kind of spiral,” she said.

The Griffins have three more games before PSAC West play opens Jan. 3 at Slippery Rock. Seton Hill was picked to finish fifth in the conference, but the players are confident they can prove that prognostication wrong.

Frye, who has been through her share of ups and downs in her decorated career, said the 10-0 record is no illusion.

This Seton Hill team is for real, she said, and will be a real threat.

“I would definitely say we’re turning heads more than we ever have,” she said. “My No. 1 goal has always been a PSAC championship, (but) I have yet to get past the first round of the playoffs.

“I was telling Maeve earlier in the season, if there was ever a year when I saw the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s this one.”