Twenty-two eventful minutes had elapsed in the game, but the women's basketball team still didn't accept the reality. Eleventh-seeded DePaul was not going to play the second-round sacrificial lamb.

The Blue Demons jumped to an eight-point lead less than four minutes before halftime and went into the locker room with a one-point lead. They built it back to five points in the first 1:29 after intermission.

All this, and still no reality check.

With 18:31 left in the game, Penn State Coach Rene Portland decided to drive home reality the last way she knew how -- via the in-your-face, tongue-lashing timeout.

"I thought I had wasted my time at halftime," Portland said. "They came out in the first two minutes of the second half and we had to call a quick timeout."

"But we were down to the last 18 minutes and the end of a season, to be very honest. We knew we had four timeouts and I used it just to blow them away."

Reality hit home.

With a stifling defense, the third-seeded Lady Lions built a 16-0 run, erasing the five-point deficit and putting away an overachieving Blue Demons team, 77-54, Saturday at Rec Hall.

Now reality couldn't be clearer as Penn State (24-6) will make its first regional appearance since 1986 when it faces No. 2 seed Mississippi on Thursday in a Midwest semifinal in Boulder, Colo.

Susan Robinson overcame a lackluster first half to lead Penn State with a game-high 26 points and 10 rebounds. Kathy Phillips and Jackie Donovan each chipped in 11 points and five boards.

"We knew better than what we had shown in the second half," Phillips said. "We kept talking in the locker room, 'Come on, this is our game. Let's do it.' And we didn't do it. We needed Rene to get down in our faces."

Gone is the James Madison monkey that was so firmly fixed to the Lady Lions' backs for the better part of the year. But it didn't go away easily.

DePaul guard Sue Welenc burned the Lady Lions early with pinpoint accuracy from long range, finishing the first half with 12 points on 5-for-8 shooting. Her running 10-footer with 17:44 left in the game gave the Blue Demons a 39-34 lead.

However, Penn State was able to bail itself out with effective defensive changeups in the second half -- changeups which confused and tired a DePaul team short on depth.

After Welenc's jumper, the Lady Lions allowed the Blue Demons only missed shots and turnovers for the ensuing seven minutes.

With the clamps closed tightly on the DePaul offense, Penn State only had to generate some of its own offense to put the Blue Demons out for the count. And the Lady Lions generated more than enough for a sound knockout.

Robinson began the game's decisive run with a 3-point play. Phillips followed with a 16-foot jumper to tie the game. Robinson gave Penn State its first lead, 41-39, since the 8:04 mark of the first half with a top-of-the-key 17-footer.

DePaul Coach Doug Bruno tried to squelch the brewing momentum with a timeout, but Rec Hall was simply out of control. The noise from the crowd of 3,465 only grew in proportion to the number of high-fives and fist pumps coming from the Lady Lion bench.

"The crowd is where it started," guard Dana Eikenberg said. "When we walked on the court, flapping our arms, they just rose to the occasion. Talk about a team rising to the occasion . . . the crowd did everything."

DePaul's Cathy Pezdirtz finally ended her team's scoring drought with a 16-foot jumper to cut the lead to 50-41 with 9:51 left. But the legs had long since been taken out of the Blue Demons, who could get no closer than nine points the rest of the way.

All told, Penn State forced 17 turnovers and garnered 10 steals. After shooting a sizzling 52 percent from the field in the first half, DePaul connected on just 31 percent of its attempts in the second stanza. Also, the Lady Lions jumped all over DePaul on the boards, collecting 42 to the Blue Demons' 24.

"I thought they were very effective (changing defenses)," Bruno said. "That's what happens with fine wine -- it's mature, it's been there a long time and you can do a lot of things with it. That's what this senior team is."

But as impressive as Penn State's second half was, its coach is well aware that it will take more than 18 minutes of quality basketball to knock off the Rebels, who defeated Southern Illinois on Saturday, 72-56.

Portland hasn't wasted any time in reminding her players of that reality.

"After they danced for about 30 seconds in the locker room, we turned it off and said, 'Let's stay focused,' " Portland said. "We don't want (this win) to be the biggest celebration of the year, though this is a major hurdle for our program and a major hurdle for this (senior) class . . .

"It's always going to get harder. But as I've said to the kids, I just hope they save their best for last."