Found a nice article from The Leaf Chronicle's James D. Horne about how the Austin Peay women's basketball team has excelled in the past decade in large part to coach Carrie Daniels who created a name for herself after winning Peay's first championship in the 95-96 season.
Peay will play in the women's NCAA tournament after winning the OVC tournament last weekend. ESPN Bracketology has them right now as the 16 seed playing UConn. Below is the article:
At the beginning of this decade, Austin Peay ruled the roost in the OVC, winning four straight tournament championships while earning the automatic trips to the NCAA Tournament.
The Lady Govs' recent run to their second consecutive title at Nashville's Bridgestone Arena in a 69-60 victory over Eastern Illinois last Saturday not only gave the program a seventh championship, it assured their status as the team of the decade.
It was an echo to the past and the first championship the Lady Govs won under then senior guard Carrie Daniels, now head coach, after the 1995-96 season.
"I'm sitting here and it's almost not real to me," Daniels said. "I know it just happened, but no one thought we'd be sitting here again after the way our season went. I always believed in this team and I always knew the talent we had.
"We didn't always perform the best throughout the season, but I never gave up on them. Every night I went home and tossed and turned in bed and tried to find ways to motivate them and try to find ways to get it out of them.
"... It means so much to me to see them experience what I did as a player."
Daniels won her two titles faster than any other coach in Lady Govs' history.
Austin Peay reached the pinnacle as a third seed this year after taking it all as a fifth seed last season. The first two Lady Govs teams that won titles this decade in 2001 and 2002 did so as a third and fourth seed before winning the regular season and tournaments the next two seasons.
Austin Peay will find out where it will play during the NCAA Tournament Selection Show on Monday at 6 p.m. (ESPN, Charter Cable Ch. 35).
"But as a coach, I know what it feels like and what they're going through and it's so special," Daniels said. "To know I'm on the sideline helping guide them, there's nothing like it, and I wouldn't trade anything for it in the world.
"Regardless of how the season went, or how many times I went home frustrated, they mean the world to me and I love them with all my heart."
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