They earned their jerseys
Sacred Heart, 1-8 at one point in season, recovers to win its conference tourney
Sacred Heart, after holding a 16-4 lead at the end of the first quarter, fell into a back-andforth game at Army, nine lead changes and four ties. The Pioneers finally lost that night of Dec. 7, their seventh loss in a row.
And coach Jessica Mannetti had seen enough.
“I took their jerseys away,” Mannetti said. “They weren’t allowed to practice in their practice jerseys for a solid three weeks because we had no pride. There were hard conversations, we went through a lot of adversity.”
For more than four weeks, actually, the Sacred Heart women’s basketball players practiced in the pinnies usually given out to the participants in the program’s camp for high school players, and raggedy shorts. The losing streak reached eight, the record 1-8, before they beat Fairfield on Dec. 11. On Jan. 7, after a victory over Stonehill, the fourth win in five games, Mannetti walked into the locker room and saw the writing on the board:
“We want our jerseys back.”
Satisfied that her call for accountability had
“We had to have more pride on defense. That’s what the whole season was about, having more pride, having more heart – that’s the word, heart” — Ny’ceara Pryor, Sacred Heart team captain
been answered, the coach at last relented, the first step on the road back from the bottom that culminated on Sunday with a 72-60 win over FDU to take the NEC Tournament and its automatic NCAA Tournament bid, the program’s first in 11 years. The Pioneers (18-13), winners of 17 of 22, will play Southern University (18-14) a First Four play-in game at Palo Alto, Calif., on Wednesday at 9 p.m. The winner gets No.1 seed Stanford in the Round of 64.
“You couldn’t have written a better story,” said Mannetti, in her 10th season at SHU, as the team was making its way to the airport Monday afternoon.
The leading role in this rather remarkable redemption tale was seized by Ny’ceara Pryor, a 5-foot-3 freshman from Baltimore who found her way to Sacred Heart when other schools overlooked her. Pryor, who leads the nation with 120 steals and 3.97 per game, averages 18.2 points, 6.8 rebounds and 4.2 assists. She was the NEC’S player of the year, rookie of the year, defensive player of the year and, after getting 20 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists against FDU, the conference tournament MVP.
“Having our jerseys taken for a while, there was an adjustment we had to make,” Pryor said. “We had to have more pride on defense. That’s what the whole season was about, having more pride, having more heart – that’s the word, heart. That’s the biggest thing for us, taking our time with it and bringing our pride back.”
And did we mention Pryor is five… feet … three? And a freshman? It bears repeating.
“She is a programchanger, as you see,” Mannetti said. “She is so special. I've coached a long time, and I can safely say she is the best player this league has ever seen. And she is the best player I've ever coached. As a freshman, to be able to do the things she did, it's historic. She was massively underrecruited because of her size.“she is the tiniest little person with a personality that is larger than life. She is what brings our team to life.”
Pryor played with so much passion, even in the midst of the Pioneers' long tailspin, Mannetti named her captain five games into the season, though the team has three seniors and three grad students.
“When my Coach told me I was going to be the captain, it was surprising at first,” Pryor said. “Then I just took on the role and from it's been amazing. My teammates trust me, and whatever I say, they just go with it. That's the biggest thing, having that trust.”
Sajada Bonner, grad transfer from Quinnipiac, averages 11 points, freshman Amelia Wood 7.6 rebounds for the Pioneers, a mix of young and experienced players that gelled a the perfect time.
Former assistant coach
Ross James first alerted Mannetti to Pryor, who was playing at Western High in Baltimore. She paid little attention to who was and wasn't recruiting her, she just knew Sacred Heart felt right and she committed during an unofficial visit.
“It was just a home away from home,” she said. “I've got a big family, so it was just a home away from home. It felt like it was home, and that's why I chose to come. You're going to be away from your family all the time, so having another family outside of my actual family, the team that was here just welcomed me with open arms.”
Sacred Heart finished 12-4 in conference play to get the second seed in the NEC tournament, then defeated LIU, Merrimack and FDU. Pryor put on quite a display in the final. With 2½ minutes to go and the shot clock running down, she drove the lane and, falling off to the right, she put up a shot over a much taller defender and banked it in at a seemingly impossible angle. “Throughout the season, I've been making big-time shots,” Pryor said.
“Oh, that's what she does,” Mannetti said. “Somebody asked me, ‘Mannetti, do you have late-game situations planned out if you need buckets?' I said, ‘Yeah, I'm going to give the ball to Ny and tell everybody else to get the hell out of the way.'”