On Monday, with the clock ticking down, Saint Peter’s senior guard Rachel Kuhl drove to the lane for a layup, putting her team up by four over Central Connecticut State. The shot looked routine, and, while it provided some crucial late insurance, it wasn’t a go-ahead or a buzzer beater. Yet it felt “very surreal,” Kuhl says. The players were ecstatic.
As soon as they got to the locker room, Kuhl and her fellow Peacocks drenched coach Jennifer Leedham, pouring out every water bottle they could get their hands on for a victory baptism.
“They absolutely soaked me,” Leedham says. “It felt like an eternity.”
Courtesy of Autumn Dorsey
Sure, it was just the second game of the season against an unranked, nonconference opponent.
But it was Saint Peter’s women’s basketball’s first win in 616 days.
Why the jubilation for a November win against an unranked, nonconference opponent?
Simple: This was Saint Peter’s women’s basketball’s first win in 616 days.
The Peacocks finished last season 0–30. They had close losses and boat races and games that got away from them, but they did not have a single win. That gives them a claim to the worst college basketball season ever in Division I, matched only by the Youngstown State women’s team of 2009–10, which also went 0–30. (There have been winless seasons on the men’s side, too, but only topping out at 0–28 or 0–29.) So to get a win so early in the season this year? It felt like a dream. It ended the longest losing streak in D-I. And the group celebrated accordingly.
“As corny as it sounds, it was like a weight was lifted off our shoulders,” Leedham says. “It was definitely a sigh of relief, but it was also exciting, because it’s just what we needed and hopefully something we can build upon. Last year was tough, but we talked about culture and laying the foundation. … To see that in our second game, I was just really happy for the program.”
Leedham took over at Saint Peter’s last summer. The Jersey City, N.J., school is small, with an undergraduate enrollment of scarcely 2,000, and best known for the Cinderella run its men’s team went on in 2022. But as Leedham began a rebuild of sorts in her first year at Saint Peter’s, trying to instill a new system and build a new culture, she realized she might be in for a difficult transition season. She’d deliberately scheduled a tough nonconference schedule. Yet life didn’t get any easier as the year wore on.
“It definitely changed my way of thinking and coaching,” says Leedham, who previously served as associate head coach at St. Francis and as an assistant at Wagner. “It’s human nature to look at what you don’t have or focus on the negatives. … But just kind of having the same message on a daily basis of trust in the process and instilling our foundation for the future of the program and finding positives, it was a really big life lesson for me.”
That held for the players, too. As frustrating as their performance could be on the court, the resolve they showed was encouraging, Leedham says.
“Losing all those games, showing up to practice, still coming and working hard, still staying together as a team—that isn’t easy,” Kuhl says.
Courtesy of Autumn Dorsey
There are nine players new to the team this year. (“It’s a special recruiting spiel you give when you’re 0–30,” Leedham says. “We have to be very transparent.”) It’s a lot of new pieces to integrate. But there’s nowhere to go but up.
Kuhl was the only player to start all 30 games last year. She never once thought about transferring somewhere else for her senior season, she says. If you live through 0–30? You want to stick around to see the other side.
“Even if you weren’t part of the program last year, or you’re new to the program, everyone knows what we went through last year,” Kuhl says. “Everyone’s kind of carrying that with them, even if they weren’t physically here, so we’re hungry. We’re coming for a lot this year.”
Progress is gradual. But in three games so far this season, the Peacocks have been notably better on the boards, with an increased rebound rate, and they also cut down on turnovers. They played Central Connecticut State last year, too, and they lost by 20. To come away with a victory against the team this year felt like a win in more ways than one.
“Everything that we went through last year,” Kuhl says, “it was just a really good feeling to get that first win and kind of build a new start.”
