‘It’s remarkable to actually watch.’ Transylvania basketball’s win streak reaches 56.

A national championship in any sport can signify many things outside of just being the best.

Earning respect from the nation’s top competition, bringing joy to a community of fans who followed along each and every step of the way or finally allowing the realization that, yes, seriously, the team achieved its biggest goal together, to wash over.

For the No. 2-ranked Transylvania women’s basketball team (23-0, 16-0 Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference), the 2023 Division III women’s basketball national champion with an undefeated record on its path to hoisting the trophy, each of those things was in play. But when it was all said and done and the focus shifted to a new chapter in the form of the 2023-24 season, an especially validating lesson set in — the years and years of immense effort and unique methodology coach Juli Fulks and her staff have implemented and tweaked for years led the program exactly where it wanted it to go.

“The thing it most reaffirms is our daily approach works,” Fulks said. “And the end result is from days and days of doing it right and trying to have everybody get better. And there’s just not an overnight fix to any of this that, you know, you can’t win a national championship without lots of consecutive moments where everybody has worked hard to collectively get better.”

Lots of things connect this year’s edition of the Pioneers to the program’s previous iterations. The label of reigning national champion will follow Transylvania, at least, until the spring, and a coaching staff whose leader has taken up office at the Clive M. Beck Center since 2014. Even the players themselves are familiar faces, with all but one starter, point guard and leading scorer Maddie Kellione (now at Division I Tennessee Tech), returning for the 2023-24 campaign.

The most discussed point of consistency, though, is the Pioneers’ eye-catching active win streak. Which, after an 83-22 rout of Manchester at home on Saturday afternoon, stands at 56 straight victories. Transylvania hasn’t lost a game since March 12, 2022, when Trine University defeated the Pioneers 54-47 in the NCAA Division III Elite Eight.

The 56-game win streak is the longest active streak for any gender in any division of NCAA college basketball, and it puts the Pioneers in impressive company. According to Transylvania Athletics and the NCAA, with 56 straight victories, the Pioneers check in as the No. 15 longest NCAA college basketball win streak in the history of the sport, regardless of division or gender.

The Pioneers are not, however, in sole possession of the longest active win streak across all NCAA sports — Oklahoma softball’s streak is at 57 after a victory on Saturday.

All that to say, Transylvania’s 2023-24 roster understands what it takes to win.

“It’s remarkable to actually watch,” Fulks said. “And to know that our freshmen and sophomores have never lost a game. And really, you know, the super-seniors have over 100 wins. It’s a lot of winning. I remind myself every time we win right now that there was lots of years where winning a game was the hardest thing ever.”

The team’s 2022 Elite Eight loss to Trine gave way to a new era of leaders, spearheaded by Kellione and the three now super-seniors of this year’s roster — Laken Ball, Kennedi Stacy and Dasia Thornton.

“They have this passion to compete in big moments,” Fulks said. “And they like the big stuff. And so honestly, I think their biggest strength has always been they’re a group that, in big moments, they rise.”

What it also did, however, was demonstrate what it’s like to fall short in the spotlight when the ultimate goal is so close.

“Ever since, the bigger the moment, the bigger the crowd, the better they are,” Fulks said. “And you know, that’s fun to coach when you’re like, ‘OK, great. We’re gonna have a huge crowd tonight,’ and you can count on your team being better. I get really worried when it’s games that have not motivated them. And over a course of 30 games, they cannot be highly charged every game, it just doesn’t work that way. And maybe the most impressive thing about the winning streak … Their baseline is better than everybody else, and has to be to win that many games in a row. Even when we’re bad, they can find a way to do enough to win.”

But in the first year without Kellione — who is currently working her way back from an injury sustained ahead of Tennessee Tech’s season — there was a question of what the “baseline” would look like in a new era of Transy basketball. In an effort to determine exactly what the Pioneers needed to work on, Fulks intentionally scheduled a difficult pair of exhibition games — Transylvania faced reigning Division II national champion Ashland and Division I ASUN member Eastern Kentucky. The takeaways? Transylvania could continue its game plan when it came to defense and rebounding — “Our defense is probably 4 to 5% better, our rebounding is solid,” — but the tried-and-true offensive strategies would no longer work.

“We’re different on offense,” Fulks said. “The best thing about playing EKU and Ashland was it became really clear that what we ran on offense last year was not going to work without Maddie. And thankfully, we had played somebody that was going to be really evident that we had to fix things, which is why we did it. And it was also affirming that our defense could hold against anybody because we could compete with them from a rebounding and a defensive side of the ball. And so, you know, at the time I was like, ‘Man, I’m not sure this was a good idea.’ But it really, I think, just became so obvious to us that we needed to change our offense to fit what happens when you don’t have Maddie.”

Fulks explained the old offense often featured eight to 12 possessions where Kellione brought the ball and took — what was regularly — a smart shot, meaning there were at least eight possessions per game where the Pioneers knew they wouldn’t turn the ball over.

Since the exhibition games, Transylvania has dominated its competition. After Saturday’s win against Manchester, the Pioneers are averaging 71.4 points while beating opponents by 29.7 points. This is a team that shoots 43.3% from the field and 32.2% from 3-point range, and dishes 18.1 assists while giving up 13.3 turnovers per contest.

By comparison, the 2022-23 national championship roster averaged 73.6 points while beating the competition by 26.1 points. Last year’s team shot similarly, too, at 42.1% from the field and 30.7% from long range. The turnover average was also close, at 13.9 per game, but the team averaged fewer assists (15.8) throughout the 33-0 season.

Of these differences, no matter how they might appear to those on the outside, Fulks and her staff (and her players) are well aware. Fulks said the team is still working to find the right offensive solution.

“We’re still trying to figure out what is best with this group on offense,” Fulks said. “I think college offense is really, really hard. And, you know, our defense and rebounding held us through the last two games of the year when we were just average on offense and has held us through many games this year when our offensive output, for our standards, has been average.”

For those keeping track at home, the Pioneers are actively adjusting their offensive attack, working hard to maintain their stifling defense and handling their competition while cultivating college basketball’s longest active win streak. But that’s not all. This season’s team also benefits from the continued efforts of its strongest leaders (Ball recently eclipsed 1,000 career points), the detailed coaching of longtime Division I referee-turned-Transy assistant Laura Morris, and the major advantage of a head coach nearing her 400th career victory (currently at 392).

Somehow, there’s still time in the day to prepare to combat their own weaknesses in hopes of understanding how to adapt when opponents — both within the HCAC and beyond, in the Pioneers’ inevitable NCAA Tournament invitation — zero in and strike.

“In the back of our minds,” Fulks said, “we’re always trying to prepare for what we think, in the NCAA Tournament, can undo us. We did that last year, and we’re doing that this year. We’re trying to be really prepared for what we think could really be a challenge for us. And we work on that, all the time.”

Longest win streaks in NCAA basketball history

▪ 1. DI UConn (W) — 111 games, 2014-17.

▪ 2. DI UConn (W) — 90 games, 2008-10.

▪ 3. DI UCLA (M) — 88 games, 1971-74.

▪ 4. DIII Washington (St. Louis) (W) — 81 games, 1998-2001.

▪ 5. DII Ashland (W) — 73 games, 2016-18.

▪ 6. DI UConn (W) — 70 games, 2001-03.

▪ 7. DIII Amherst (W) — 68 games, 2016-18.

▪ 8. DIII Thomas More (W) — 61 games, 2014-16.

▪ 8. DIII Hope College (W) — 61 games, 2019-22.

▪ 10. DI San Francisco (M) — 60 games, 1954-56.

▪ 10. DIII Capital (W) — 60 games, 1994-95.

▪ 10. DIII SUNY Potsdam (M) — 60 games, 1985-87.

▪ 13. DIII DePauw (W) — 58 games, 2012-14.

▪ 14. DII Winona State (M) — 57 games, 2006-07.

▪ 15. DIII Transylvania (W) — 56 games, 2022-present.

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