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Coverage of the women's Final Four

2005 season

Back at it after 20 years
By Mark Simon
D3hoops.com

Take a step back in the time machine to 1985, when Back to the Future was one of the most popular movies in America and Scranton and Millikin were two of the best women’s basketball teams in the country.

Millikin photo by Chase Agnello-Dean Lindsay Ippel spent the majority of the season on the JV but spent the majority of the sectionals scoring and rebounding.

The game was different back then, as women’s hoops hadn’t really gained a national following. It was only the fourth national championship since the NCAA had supplanted the AIAW as the national governing body of women's athletics. There was no such thing as D3hoops.com (or the World Wide Web, really) and teams learned about their opponents through rumors and hearsay. The Lady Royals have been back to the Final Four several times, but haven’t won it all since that magical season. The Big Blue have had a lot of very good teams, but until this season, found their path through the NCAAs blockaded in the early rounds by the likes of Washington U. and some of the dominant squads in the WIAC.

Scranton was a dominant team, coached by a young Mike Strong (sans the silver hair that makes him easily recognizable now). The Lady Royals only lost once, in their third game of the season against Utica, and similarly this season’s Scranton team, ranked No. 1 nationally in our final regular-season Top 25 poll, has only lost once — to Williams in the season opener.

“The 1985 team was cocky,” Strong said. “They thought they would win everything, and they did. We had two of the best players I’ve had here. But that team doesn’t play man-to-man defense like my current team does. This team has responded very well to coaching”

Strong’s current squad does win with defense, holding opponents to just 50 points per game. These Lady Royals don’t have two superstars, just one in sophomore guard Taryn Mellody, a first-team D3hoops.com All-Region selection who averaged 16.6 points, and 6.2 rebounds this season. She also shot 52% from the field, 40% from 3-point range and 94% from the free-throw line. In crunch time, there was no one better than Mellody, whose clutch 3-pointer with under a minute remaining clinched the 49-43 quarterfinals win over No. 2 Bowdoin.

“She reminds me of a high-level tennis player,” said Strong, who also used to coach tennis at Scranton. “She’s a perfectionist in so many ways. She loves to shoot under pressure. We’ve seen it from her all year.”

Scranton can score from a lot of spots on the floor, and though no one else averages double figures, there are plenty of other big contributors, like forward Tara Gemmel, guard Allison Matt, and center Eileen Webster (who average a combined 27.8 points per game). This is a team that has relished being its No. 1 ranking and doesn’t mind being the hunted ones. The Lady Royals have fought their way through some close games en route to the Final Four, like a late season win at DeSales, and a second-round NCAA triumph over McDaniel.

“I told them ‘If you are No. 1, play like you’re No. 1 and act like it,” Strong said. “They’ve responded quite well to that. Allison, who won four state championships in high school, plays with a refuse-to-lose attitude. Eileen and Tara have worked really hard to improve themselves. They’ve both been extremely good defensively. I’d say we’ve defended the post this year better than ever…or at least, ever since 1985.”

There are a number of neat coincidences tying together the Millikin team of 1985 and the present one.

The Big Blue had to deal with a significant injury on both occasions. Seventeen days before the 1985 Final Four, Kerans had an emergency appendectomy, and sat on her bed listening to how her replacement, a freshman from Decatur (where Millikin is located) named Paula Keller, filled in quite ably at point guard. This season, when the team’s primary enforcer, starting power forward Karin Olson, broke her foot just before the stretch run, she was replaced by a freshman from Decatur, Lindsay Ippel, who has played like a superstar in Olson’s absence. The 6-foot-2 Ippel, who played JV for three-quarters of the season, has averaged 22.2 points per game in the last four contests and been the team’s leading scorer in each one, including a quarterfinal win over her parents’ alma mater, Calvin.

“When I recruit someone, I try to picture them three years down the road,” Kerans said. “Lindsay had the work ethic, the personality and the ability to be one of the best players here by then. But she’s really been a pleasant surprise this season.”

In 1985, the local media nicknamed Millikin’s women’s team the “Cardiac Kids” because of their penchant for nerve-wracking come-from-behind victories. The Big Blue rallied from five points down with 10 seconds remaining in one NCAA Tournament game to edge William Penn, and earned two other wins on the way to the Final Four, when Kerans, playing in pain, sank game-winning free throws in the final seconds. This year, Millikin spotted its first two NCAA opponents, Washington U. and UW-Stout, double-digit leads, before rallying to win. Ippel spearheaded the rallies, particularly against Stout, where she had 19 of her 21 points in the second half, and pulled down 19 rebounds.

It took a lot more than a freshman sensation to get the Big Blue to this point. Millikin doesn’t go deep into its bench, but its starting five can each score in bunches. Six-foot-two forward Joanna Conner, whom Kerans considers a David Robinson-type, has long been one of the best players in the CCIW and averaged 12.5 points and 8.1 rebounds, shooting from both inside and outside. Conner is also a good ballhandler and dominant defender, as evidenced by her 75 assists and 71 blocked shots. Senior Audrey Minott quarterbacks the offense and defense and has much more of an impact than her 6.2 points per game would indicate. Laura Zimmerman plays both small and power forward, and has a nifty spin move, while Lindsey Koehn, who hits three-pointers at a 47% clip, is also responsible for guarding the opponent’s best player

In 1985 Scranton and Millikin met in the national semifinals on the campus of St. Norbert, in Wisconsin. They won’t meet this time around unless each wins (or loses) their semifinal — the Lady Royals go up against Randolph-Macon and the Big Blue take on an unfamiliar foe in Southern Maine. The Lady Royals won that meeting 20 years ago, 83-75, behind the play of two superstars, point Deanna Kyle and forward Shelley Parker, then beat New Rochelle the next day for the championship. Kyle (now married and an assistant at Scranton under the name Deanna Klingman) went 9-for-10 from the field, going up against Kerans, who was able to chuckle about it 20 years later.

“She smoked us,” Kerans said. “She was phenomenal. That’s what the Final Four is about. It gives great players a chance to shine.

“Nothing would please me more than getting a chance to avenge that game. Maybe I’ll have a chance to do better against Mike than I did that day against Deanna.”

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