BROOKINGS, S.D. - Just 374 days ago, March 7, 2016, the NIU women's basketball ended its season at Western Michigan in the First Round of the Mid-American Conference.

With just nine healthy players suited - one of whom started the game after breaking her toe in the hotel pool the night before doing rehab - the Huskies fell to the Broncos, 94-52, and closed Head Coach Lisa Carlsen's first season with an 11-19 record.

Losing only one starter from that team and returning three seniors to be, the group committed in the offseason, pushing each other in a grueling boot camp competition and organizing team workouts. Little did the 10 returning players from that team realize that it laid the cornerstones for the 2016-17 season through its losses and offseason conditioning, working to #RestoreTheGlory, the team's adopted mantra for Coach Carlsen's second season.

Fast forward to March 16, 2017 and NIU secured its first 20-win campaign in two decades, its first winning season in the last 10 years and its first conference championship game and postseason tournament appearance since 1995.

Battling through adversity and coming together as a team throughout the 2016-17 season, the Huskies closed the year in the First Round of the Women's National Invitational Tournament at South Dakota State, 94-84.

While Northern Illinois University fell in its seventh postseason game of the NCAA era, it maintained one of nation's highest scoring offenses, finishing as the MAC's fifth-highest scoring offense of all-time with 85.1 points per game and No. 5 in the country.

Along the way this season, the Huskies relied on a multitude of players and nothing changed on the national stage versus the Jackrabbits as four players finished with 15-or-more points, paced by Kelly Smith's and Courtney Woods 19 points. The duo also recorded double-doubles as they became the first players since 1993 to register the feat in a post-conference championship contest. Through that team-first play, NIU finished as the only Division I program with five players to average double figures this season.

That volatile Huskie offense made no lead comfortable for their foes, overcoming deficits of 10 points or larger six times.

The NIU fight carried through the game, despite South Dakota State's hot three-point shooting that resulted in a near WNIT record 14 field goals behind the arc. 

Down by 10 with 4:32 left in the first half, a trey by Mikayla Voigt, the final spark on an 8-0 run, tied the game 42-42 with 51 seconds left. However, an SDSU trey with just seconds left on the clock put the Jacks back on top at the half, 45-42.

Despite that deficit and despite the Jackrabbits desire to attempt to throttle Northern Illinois University in front of 2,610 boisterous fans at Frost Arena, the Huskies fought until the final horn, rallying back to within six points at the final media timeout in the fourth quarter from a 13-point deficit in the third and fourth periods.

While Carlsen called the shots from the NIU sideline, the Huskies leaders on the floor, particularly seniors Ally Lehman and Cassidy Glenn, responded to rally Northern Illinois University.

In their final game donning the Cardinal and Black, Glenn accounted for nine points and seven rebounds while Lehman did Lehman things with a 15-point, six-rebound and five-assist performance.

In 122 games at NIU, Lehman finished 11th all-time at NIU in scoring with 1,461 points, sixth in rebounds with 990 and first in assists with 538. The Nineveh, Ind., native finished just 10 boards shy of becoming the fourth player in NCAA history to record 1,000-1,000-500 in her career. Remarkably, Lehman accomplished that in her career in at least 10 fewer games than her predecessors who reached the mark.

The victory by South Dakota State, who made its 11th consecutive postseason appearance tonight, advanced to the Second Round of the WNIT where it will host Colorado. The Jacks finished +12 on the glass, led by Clarissa Ober's 17-point, 20-rebound performance. Offensively, Kerri Young accounted for 28 of the Jackrabbits 94 points in the contest.

In the postgame radio show, The Voice of the Huskies Bill Baker, who has now called all 10 of the Huskies postseason games since 1990, said in reference to the program's first playoff appearance in over two decades to Carlsen "someone has to take that first step and to that first tournament and that was you in just your second year. Good things will happen when you play the game right and when you win, there's a chance for postseason and championships."

Carlsen's response was profound, simple and straight to the point.

"When (players) get a taste of all the hard work paying off, I think that's where you build your program into a perennial contender. We want the ability to compete for championships year after year like they have here at South Dakota State. Once you give the kids a taste of that and they understand what that feels like, if you can continue to build that culture, you have the opportunity to continue that year after year.

"I feel like our young kids do understand that and we can continue to develop them with the understanding of 'this is the expectation.' No longer is the expectation to hope and pray to play postseason basketball; (we) work hard enough to deserve that. Hopefully this is a stepping stone that's pushing us in the right direction and is something that we can build on," she said.

The Huskies goal entering the season was to hang a banner from the rafters at the NIU Convocation Center. Through hard work, determination and belief as a group, the 2016-17 NIU women's basketball #RestoredTheGlory, writing a new chapter for the program's success that will live on in the Huskies annals for years to come.

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