Marajiah Bacon and the Kean women's basketball team have bounced back from last year's setbacks, not to mention the setbacks delivered by the NCAA in 2012. Kean athletics photo

After losing four consecutive games, the Kean women’s basketball team celebrated. Head coach Mandy King cancelled practice on Jan. 18, and the Cougars did yoga, went bowling, and had dinner together.

It was a celebration not of the team’s record, King said, but of its character.

“Our main goal this year was to create a culture that we could be really proud of, and something that would build a foundation that would set us up for winning championships,” King said. “And we felt like we had accomplished that.”

Kean’s players were working hard and being unselfish — “doing everything the right way,” King said. The Cougars were competitive during the four-game skid. They lost three of the games — including matchups with Rowan and Stockton, two of the Atlantic region’s top teams — by only six points.

Kean is now 15-9 overall and 10-7 in New Jersey Athletic Conference play. The Cougars are tied with William Paterson for fourth place in the NJAC standings.

Kean’s season is remarkable not just because the team is young — there are nine freshmen, four of whom start — but also because just a few seasons ago, Kean epitomized an entirely different culture.

When King was hired in May 2012, the program was reeling. Just one month earlier, the NCAA found that Kean had committed several violations, most involving former women’s basketball head coach Michele Sharp. The NCAA issued sanctions, including a four-year probation and a postseason ban for the women’s basketball team in the 2012-13 season.

Kean had so few players when King arrived, she said, that she and her staff recruited on campus in the fall of 2012.

“We literally were looking in the cafeteria for tall people,” King said.

Kean went 5-18 in King’s first season. The Cougars improved in the 2013-14 season, finishing 18-12 overall and 11-7 in conference play. But they regressed last year, going 12-13 (7-11 NJAC).

“Last year was a huge setback,” King said. “We felt like after Year 2 we were going to be ready to get back to the NCAA Tournament and have a chance to win the NJAC, and our chemistry just wasn’t where it needed to be a year ago.”

This year, King said, Kean has “the right kids.” That includes freshman guard Marajiah Bacon, the nation’s leading scorer with 24.6 points per game. She has scored at least 30 points in six games and even reached 40 points in two of those contests. Bacon had a career-high 44 points against Bridgewater State on Jan. 3 and 40 against William Paterson on Feb. 10.

“We knew that, when we saw her play a year ago, that she was going to change everything about Kean basketball,” King said.

Kean started this season 9-3. Since the four-game losing streak, the Cougars are 6-2. Two of their recent wins came against two of the region’s best teams, Montclair State and Rowan. The Cougars earned a 73-67 victory over the Red Hawks on Jan. 20 and a 90-82 overtime win against the Profs on Feb. 6.

“Those are the types of wins that you think about for the rest of your season,” King said. “Being able to knock off a team as tough as Montclair and then an experienced team like Rowan, I think that it really helped our confidence, and it reassured our guys that if they continue to fight for one another and play the game the right way, that we were going to have an opportunity to be in that same category.”

Bacon led all scorers with 29 points against Montclair State and 32 against Rowan.

“Her pull-up jumper off the bounce is one of the best I’ve seen,” Montclair State head coach Karin Harvey said. “She can also shoot the three. So you try to close out on her to keep her from getting the three, she puts the ball on the floor. You want to keep her from getting to the rim, because she can score there too, but then she just pulls up.

“She’s tough to handle.”

Bacon’s twin sister, Miesha, is also a starting guard for Kean. But most of Kean’s players did not know each other before this season. Marajiah Bacon said that the team has strong chemistry in part because the players spend time together off the court.

“We hang out with each other in our dorms, we eat lunch together at school, we help each other with homework,” she said. “It’s just the little things that make us better as teammates and players.”

For King, this year’s team is a bridge to future success. She already has recruits committed for next year, she said.

“Now we’re really on our way to building Kean the way it’s supposed to be built,” King said. “I think we really do have the makings of a Final Four team.”

Red Hawks rebounding

Kean’s victory over Montclair State on Jan. 20 was a turning point for the Red Hawks as well. Since that game, Montclair State is 7-0. The Red Hawks (18-6, 14-3 NJAC) are now in a three-way tie with Rowan and Stockton for first place in the NJAC standings.

Montclair State is one of the league’s top teams despite facing adversity this season. The Red Hawks lost their two All-Americans from last year, Melissa Tobie and Janitza Aquino, to graduation, and senior captain Kayla Ceballos tore her right ACL in late December. Ceballos had been the team’s leading scorer before the injury.

“We’ve had to reinvent ourselves a few times this year,” Harvey said. “When Kayla tore her ACL, it hit us pretty hard, and we struggled a little bit for three or four games there, trying to figure out how we were going to do things and who was going to score.”

Scoring has been a “collective effort,” Harvey said. In Montclair State’s 71-70 win over Rowan on Feb. 10, junior guard Rachael Krauss scored a game-high 22 points, and sophomore guard/forward Katie Sire scored 21.

Montclair State hosts Stockton in the teams’ final regular-season game on Wednesday.

“Regardless of what happens Wednesday, we’re hoping we can get another shot” at Rowan and Stockton, Harvey said. “You’re going to have to go through them to win the conference tournament, there’s no question.”