Victory brought relief for the Penn State Lady Lions who avoided college basketball infamy.

A No.3 seed never lost to a No.14.

For the eliminated Wichita State Shockers, the team turned in a gritty effort as they were looking to make history but ultimately didn’t have enough to knock off the home-team Lions.

”I felt we were in a great position all good game long,” Shockers coach Jody Adams said. ”We made take tough shots, they had to take tough looks at the rim, but the one thing that they better than we did was board the ball.”

Maggie Lucas lead the way with 22 points and nine rebounds as the No.3-seeded Lady Lions rallied from an early 11-point hole to defeat the No.14 seed Wichita State Shockers 62-56.

“I think we handled that pretty well and we looked to each other and played together and kept trying to stick to our game plan from the beginning,” Lucas said.

Free throws by Alex Harden and Michaela Dapprich’s three-pointer cut a 12-point second half deficit to two. But a lay-up by Talia East and three offensive rebounds in the final minute put the game away.

“The only thing that we didn’t do was we didn’t rebound,” Adams said. “With two offensive boards, it’s a two-point game, it’s our ball coming down and we didn’t box out. It’s a four-point game.”

Penn State turned to their second all-time leading scorer Maggie Lucas to rally them from an early 11-point deficit.

Adams led her team to their second straight NCAA Tournament appearance after capturing its second-consecutive Missouri Valley Conference Tournament Championship. She saw them win a program record 20 games in a row and Alex Harden win Missouri Valley Conference Defensive Player of the year for the second straight year. The only thing missing now is a Tournament win for WSU.

”We expect more,” Adams said. ”We expect to win in the NCAAs and it’s my job to lead this team to that point.”

For the first 20 minutes of the contest, it appeared Adams would get just that. The nation’s 14^th ranked Penn State was flummoxed by the Shockers’ half-court defensive tenacity, trailing 30-25 at halftime.

The Shockers opened the second half missing 10 straight shots, finally scoring on Dapprich’s 3-pointer eight minutes into the half.  During that eight minute span, Penn State scored 17 straight points to open a 42-30 lead, their largest of the game.

Dapprich finished the game with 19 points. Harden had 16.