‘Blessed and grateful’: Transylvania reaches Final Four as Juli Fulks earns her 400th win

The Transylvania women’s basketball team’s 62-48 Elite Eight victory against site host Wisconsin-Whitewater in the NCAA Division III Tournament on Saturday night demonstrated exactly what type of competitors the Pioneers are.

Transylvania head coach Juli Fulks and her team understood why they were sent on the road for the second weekend of the tournament, despite owning an undefeated record and being the top seed in its region, but that doesn’t mean the Pioneers (31-0) didn’t use the road trip as motivation.

“If there’s one thing about this team, they love to be insulted,” Fulks said. “And so — and I completely understand how it works — but I actually believed it was going to play in our favor because they saw the things this week and heard about it, and they did a good job not saying anything. And so, I think in some levels, like that was really good for them to be able to come here. And I will go on record, I completely understand how it happens and why (reportedly to reduce travel costs for the NCAA), and I have a long history of understanding that, but, you know, this week they got to hear what people thought about it. And if there’s one thing that motivates them to be better, and so they wanted to come here and they wanted to get both of these games badly.”

Following its comeback victory over the Wisconsin-Stout in Friday’s Sweet 16 matchup, the Pioneers found themselves facing another defense-forward roster with nothing to lose. And, in back-to-back games and for the third time this season, Transylvania trailed at halftime, this time by one. Fulks took responsibility for the Pioneers’ first-half performance, and said the Warhawks’ defensive intensity made things difficult.

“I think in the first half I didn’t do a very good job,” Fulks said. “I had us in a lot of different stuff. And, you know, and Whitewater, obviously, I mean, they are tremendous on defense. I mean, between them and Stout, we knew it was going to be really hard. We had an internal goal of getting to 62 both games, and, ironically, we got right to 62, so maybe we should’ve raised that number. So we knew it was gonna be really hard, in the second half we tried to simplify.”

The Pioneers, who boast an average scoring margin of 29.7 points in this season’s 31 game-contribution to their 64-game win streak, are hard to stop, to say the least. But against the Warhawks (25-5), in a loud, purple-packed Kaschel Gymnasium, Transylvania leading scorer Dasia Thornton said the team struggled.

“I think offensively, we had a pretty good game plan,” Thornton said. “Execution was a little bit … I would give it maybe a C, solid C. But you know, we always have the effort, and effort’s always there. And we were able to rebound and, you know, get stops. So the defense helped carry our offense, even though we were struggling at some points.”

After shooting just 33.3% from the field in each of the first two quarters, the Pioneers turned it on in the third quarter, hitting nine of their 16 (56.25%) field-goal attempts en route to a double-digit lead. Transylvania outscored Whitewater 40-25 in the second half. The team outrebounded Whitewater 38-31 over 40 minutes.

“We got a little too cute and probably just needed to go back to the basics,” Fulks said. “And we did that in the second half.”

Three Pioneers scored in double figures, led by a double-double effort by Thornton, who contributed 16 points and 11 rebounds in addition to five assists and three steals. Senior forward Sydney Wright finished with 14 points — including nine in the third quarter — seven rebounds and three assists. Junior point guard Sadie Wurth also scored 14 points and recorded five rebounds, one assist, one block and one steal.

Saturday’s win over the Warhawks was Fulks’ 400th career coaching victory. Fulks, the leader of the Pioneers since 2014 after 10 seasons at Lewis & Clark in Portland, Oregon, credited both her team and her parents, who chose to celebrate their 50th anniversary by watching the Pioneers advance to their second consecutive Final Four.

“Just blessed and grateful when you get to do this,” Fulks said. “We’ve had a team that has put up a lot of wins together. That was probably not the biggest milestone of the day. The biggest one is my parents’ 50th anniversary today. So, you know, that’s probably the piece that actually keeps everything going. Very grateful that I have awesome parents that are at every game and they have been at most of those wins and probably nearly all of them since we’ve moved to this side of the country. So, I’m just, I feel very lucky, and you don’t get any of those wins without, you know, one, being old, and, two, coaching great players, so, you know, there’s some longevity, I guess.”

The Pioneers will face top overall seed NYU (29-0) in the Final Four at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. NYU defeated Scranton 68-46 at NYU on Saturday night.

Dasia Thornton powers defending champion Transylvania to its third straight Elite Eight

‘Extremely disappointed.’ Transy not happy NCAA sent its women’s basketball team packing.

Undefeated Transylvania headed to NCAA Division III Sweet 16 after opening-weekend sweep