If the NCAA selection committee had made the women's basketball tournament bracket back on Jan. 24, the Lady Lions would have almost certainly been included.
Coming off a 70-66 win against Illinois, Penn State's sixth-consecutive victory, the team had notched its 16th win of the season with nine games to play.
Just four wins shy of the 20-win plateau that seems to be the threshold for teams making or not making the NCAA tournament, the Lions were poised to make the field of 64 for the first time since 2005.
Instead, Penn State lost eight of those last nine games and finds itself in a different field of 64, as one of the 64 teams playing in the Women's National Invitation Tournament.
While the WNIT isn't lacking in quality competition for the Lions, the team still ponders what could have been.
"I think every team in the country that doesn't make the NCAA tournament looks back on their season and goes, 'Man, if we could have done this, if we could have did that, if we could have taken care of business here or there,' " Lions coach Coquese Washington said.
Even after going 1-8 down the stretch, the Lions still had an outside shot at making the NCAAs with a run in the Big Ten tournament. But Penn State bowed out of the conference tournament after falling to third-seeded Iowa in the second round.
With the exit from the conference tournament came the realization that playing for a national championship was no longer an attainable goal.
But with 17 wins to their credit, the Lions were fairly confident the WNIT would come calling. It did, and when the Lions host Hofstra tonight at the Bryce Jordan Center it will be the first time any player on the roster will play postseason college basketball.
The excitement of playing in the postseason for the first time takes some of the sting of not making the NCAAs away, and the team is
looking at the WNIT as a step in the right direction.
"The history of the WNIT shows that for the teams that go in and play well, it's a springboard for the next year to have a better season," Washington said.
History shows teams that perform well in the WNIT sometimes go on to greater success, including Penn State, which won the inaugural WNIT in 1998 and then went on to an NCAA Final Four berth in 2000.
But even with the ensuing successes of past WNIT participants, that "what if?" thought is still in the back of the mind of some of the players.
And it's a thought they hope to get past before tip-off tonight.
"My goals were to get into the NCAA tournament, of course," freshman point guard Alex Bentley said.
"We are where we are right now, and I can't change the past. We're in the WNIT, so we're gonna try to do our best in it."
