Division II University Of The Sciences On A Roll In Women's Hoops

By Matt Leon

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) --- You would be hard pressed to find a team in the area playing better basketball right now than the Division II University of the Sciences women's squad.

The Devils have won ten straight and that streak has improved their record to 12-4 for the season.

"I think just as a whole we just clicked as a team," Sciences head coach Jackie Hartzell tells KYW Newsradio. "Our defense got a lot better and I think we're playing more as a team. We have people playing unselfish, sharing the ball, just making the right play and things are going pretty well for us."

Listen to Jackie Hartzell with KYW's Matt Leon:

Hartzell's squad was just 2-4 back on December 15th when they took on a University of Tampa team down in Florida that, at the time, was ranked fifth in the country. The Devils pulled off an upset, winning 66-65, and that started the winning streak.

"That was huge," Hartzell says. "We thought if we went into that game and we competed, that that would be good for us and that might get us playing better. I think we were down (12) at half and we just kept chipping away, we never gave up and Jess Sylvester had a four-point play with about two seconds left to win the game for us. So that was just a huge confidence builder for our team and that definitely was the game that got us going and got us on the right track."

And they have stayed on the right track. In addition to the Tampa win, this winning streak includes impressive victories over conference rivals Holy Family (twice) and Philadelphia University. University of the Sciences currently leads the Central Atlantic Collegiate Conference's South Division with an 8-1 conference mark. Hartzell credits a strong senior class with leading the way.

"Brianne Traub, she's our leading scorer," Hartzell says. "Scored her 1,000th point last season. Jess Sylvester just scored her 1,000th point about two weeks ago. We have Kaitlyn Schmid, Bella Ross and Kelly Otchet. So we have tremendous leadership on this year's team and they've definitely led the way for us."

Traub leads the CACC with her 21.3 ppg average and Sylvester is second on the team, pouring in 11.4 points a contest.

As far as the defense is concerned, the Devils are holding opponents to 60.8 ppg and 39.6% field goal shooting. In conference games, those numbers drop to 54.6 ppg and 34.9% shooting.

"It's team defense," Hartzell says. "It's helping each other. It's just really concentrating on our opponents personnel and knowing who's a shooter, knowing who can hurt you inside, making sure we rebound the ball and limiting teams to one shot. So it's definitely been a team effort on the defensive end."

The Devils will go for an 11th straight win on Wednesday night as they host Goldey-Beacom College.  Goldey-Beacom is actually the last team to beat University of the Sciences as the Lightning picked up a 79-61 victory over the Devils back on December 9th.

Wednesday night's game tips-off at 6:00pm.

You can follow Matt on Twitter @mattleonkyw.