ANNAPOLIS, Md. - This day 10 years ago, the Navy women's basketball was deep in its preparation for the 2011 NCAA Tournament as a matchup with the DePaul Blue Demons was just days away. Earlier that week on March 12, the Mids captured the first Patriot League title in program history knocking off the American Eagles in front of a raucous crowd at Alumni Hall. Earlier this month, Phil Bergman caught up with team captain Angela Myers, fellow senior Cassie Consedine and Patriot League Tournament MVP Jade Geif to recap that historic run in their own words.

The Story of Navy's 2010-11 Championship Season
  (by Justin Kischefsky, Navy Sports Information)

The Navy women's basketball program has produced countless memorable moments with many successful teams and outstanding players through its generation of existence. There was the very first team during the 1976-77 season that produced a 10-1 record and won the Maryland State Division B Tournament while breaking the gender barrier on The Yard. The 1978-79 team, which won 17 games in the program's second season of competing on the varsity level. Bernie Boska ('81), the first Mid to score 1,000 points in a career. Colleen Cassidy ('82), who tallied 1,817 points in just 99 games without the added benefit of the three-point line. The 1981-82 team that gave Navy its first victory over Army. The 1993-94 team that recorded Navy's first victory in the Patriot League Tournament, which set the foundation for the 1996-97 team that posted a 22-6 record as well as the 1997-98 and 1998-99 teams that advanced to the championship game of the league tournament. A mainstay on those mid-90's team was Becky Dowling ('98) who, despite missing one-third of a season due to an injury, still recorded nearly 1,500 points and over 900 rebounds in her career, as was Laurie Coffey ('99), who posted over 1,200 points and 800 caroms. There was the team that won arguably the greatest Army-Navy game in series history, an 86-85 triple overtime win at the end of the 2003 season, which featured a lineup that included Courtney Davidson ('04), who would break Cassidy's scoring record while earning a pair of Academic All-America honors in the classroom.

As Cassie Consedine and Angela Myers entered their senior seasons on The Yard in the fall of 2010, their names were already placed among the greats in Navy history. Consedine had tied the school's career blocked shots record at the end of her sophomore season and had surpassed 1,000 career points as a junior. Myers, meanwhile, filled all columns of a box score like no Navy player before her had done.

With their individual places in the annals of Navy history already secure, the sole focus for the classmates in their last season was to separate themselves and their teammates from those who came before them by being the first to stand atop a ladder and snip a piece of the net after winning the Patriot League Tournament and dancing off to the NCAA Tournament.

The thoughts of Navy contending for the league title were confirmed when the 2010-11 pre-season poll was announced. The Mids were tabbed to repeat their performance of a year ago in the voting by the league's coaches and sports information contacts. Two-time defending champion Lehigh, which had posted a 25-3 record over the last pair of seasons, was selected to tally its third consecutive crown. The Mountain Hawks narrowly edged American for the nod in the poll. The Eagles had placed second in the league in 2009, shared the regular season title in 2010 with a 13-1 record and fell to Lehigh in the championship game of the league tournament the previous March.

Reasoning behind Navy's third-place selection was due to the Mids having five of their top-seven players from the 2009-10 team return to Halsey Field House for the first day of practice in October of 2010. Included among the fellow veteran players were sophomore Chey Arvin, who was named to the Patriot League All-Rookie Team one year earlier, and junior Erin Edwards, whose on-court presence helped and rarely hurt the Mids. New to the team was a freshman class that was talented enough to provide immediate dividends. This included the inside contributions of Jade Geif, the outside shooting of Audrey Bauer and the all-around effort of Alix Membreno.

--> Fast Forwarding through a 17-11 regular season and a Patriot League mark of 10-4, that made Navy the tri-regular season champions with American and Lehigh and the number one seed for the Patriot League Tournament

Patriot League Tournament

The Patriot League announced its major individual award recipients and all-league teams prior to the start of the league tournament, and the Mids were well represented on both lists. Myers garnered first-team all-league accolades for the second-consecutive season and Consedine was placed on the league's second team for the second time in her career. Meanwhile, Geif followed in Consedine's footsteps by being tabbed as the top rookie in the league.

As flattering as the laurels were, the Mids placed thoughts of those honors aside as they prepared to play host to Colgate in the quarterfinal round of the tournament in Alumni Hall. The Mids were definitely wary of the tournament's No. 8 seed based upon the two games they had played against the Raiders this season, but Navy scored on each of its first six possessions of the game to build a 13-4 lead. After Colgate winnowed the margin down to two points, the Mids closed the half on a 12-4 run to take a 29-19 lead at intermission. A quick trey by the Raiders at the start of the second half was followed by an 11-4 run by the Mids that boosted the Navy advantage to 40-26. The Mids would lead by at least double figures and by as many as 23 points over the remainder of what would turn out to be a 55-36 victory.

Now, Navy needed to get past Bucknell to take another step in the program's development.

Navy's defense had allowed Colgate to sink just seven second-half field goals in the quarterfinal round game between the teams; the Bison would make just six field goals in the first half of the semifinal round game as the Mids built a 23-13 lead at the break. The gap between the teams grew to as many as 14 points in the second half before the Bison sliced it in half with eight minutes remaining in the game. Myers scored on a drive to the hoop and then promptly stole the ball to return possession to the Mids. That would lead to Consedine being fouled while making a move to the hoop. After making the first attempt she missed the second, but Geif swooped in to grab the offensive carom and score on a twisting putback to give the Mids a 46-34 lead. Geif herself stepped to the foul line two possessions later and made both shots to give the Mids a 14-point lead with less than six minutes remaining in the game. Neither team did much offensively over the rest of the evening before the clock ran out on a 55-41 win by Navy.

For the first time in a dozen years and for just the third time in program history, the Mids were going to play in the championship game of the Patriot League Tournament.

Patriot League Title Game

March 12, 2011. One day shy of 1,100 days earlier, Consedine and Myers left Christl Arena in West Point, N.Y., after having their freshman season come to an end with a 7-23 record. On this early spring day, they walked into Alumni Hall to play for a Patriot League title. Standing in their way was an American team that had shared the league's regular season title with the Mids and Lehigh before going on the road to knock off the 2009 and '10 champion Mountain Hawks in the semifinal round.

Perhaps the veteran experience of having played for the tournament title a year ago helped the Eagles in the early part of this year's championship game. American connected on its first four shots from the field to score the game's first eight points and quickly take an 11-3 lead. The margin hovered between three and six points for the majority of the rest of the half, but the Eagles again went on an 8-0 run at the end of the half to take a 30-18 lead at the break.

American sank half of its 12 three-point field goal attempts and shot 44.4 percent from the floor overall in the opening 20 minutes of play. Conversely, the Mids had missed all but one of their seven three-point attempts and, taking away the 4-of-6 effort from Geif, were just 3-of-15 from the field in the half.

An inspired halftime speech from eventual 2011-12 team captain Erin Edwards sent the Mids back out onto the floor. Whatever she said worked wonders as Navy quickly sank six of its first eight shots from the field. The last hoop of that run was a jumper from Edwards herself that knotted the score at 32-32 and sent a jolt of energy through the crowd of over 1,700. Navy had made up the 12-point difference in exactly five-minutes of playing time. Nintey-nine seconds later, a pair of free throws from Geif gave the Mids their first lead of the afternoon.

The Eagles quickly responded and scored the next seven points to build a 39-34 lead with 8:44 left on the clock. Little did anyone know that the three-pointer from Nicole Ryan that gave American the five-point lead would be the last field goal made by the Eagles for the game and their last points until 22 seconds were left on the clock.

While Navy's defense was clamping down, its offense was picking up. After a year of receiving great passes from Myers that led to easy buckets, Geif returned the favor and found Myers open for a trey that cut the lead down to two points. Geif then grabbed a defensive carom on one end of the floor, traversed 94 feet and made an inside move to tie the score at 39-39. It would take nearly three more minutes, but soon Bauer hit a triple that made the score 42-39. Two more minutes passed until Membreno drilled her third three-pointer of the game to give the Mids a 45-39 lead with 2:40 left to play. Edwards closed out the Navy scoring by sinking two free throws with 54 seconds remaining and then, after American made 1-of-2 attempts from the line to make the final score 47-40.

What a difference a half made on this day. The Mids shot nearly 50 percent from the floor and sank 5-of-10 three-point field goal attempts in the second half. Defensively, Navy held an American team that halfway through the game was on pace to score 60 points to just 10 in the second half on 4-of-22 shooting from the field. Much of the credit for the win went to the freshman troika of Geif, Membreno and Bauer, who combined to score 20 of Navy's 29 points in the second half and 33 of Navy's 47 points in the game. Geif, who tallied 16 points and 10 caroms against the Eagles and averaged 10.5 points and 10.0 rebounds a game during the postseason was selected as the MVP of the league tournament. But on this special Saturday evening, as it had been all season, it truly was a team effort that led to the victory as five different players scored at least seven points in the game.

Altogether, the final 20-minute effort not only produced the second-largest halftime comeback in Navy history, but also the program's greatest victory.