On March 21, Ben O\u2019Brien coached the University of Scranton in the NCAA Division III women\u2019s basketball national title game.<\/p>\n
On Monday, a little more than a month after his team lost to Denison University 55-41 in Salem, Virginia, in the championship game, O\u2019Brien was in Easton where he was introduced as the new women\u2019s basketball coach at Lafayette College.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien loves challenges and he will have one on College Hill where the Leopards haven\u2019t had a winning record since going 15-14 in the 2019-20 season. That winning year was the first since 1997-98 when the legendary Pat Fisher was coaching.<\/p>\n
Lafayette has never won a Patriot League title, but they have a winner in O\u2019Brien, who took a tradition-rich Scranton program to great heights in four seasons. He went 117-7 (.943 winning percentage) record over four seasons that included four conference championships (2023-26), two undefeated regular seasons (2023, 2026), four NCAA Tournament appearances (2023-26) and three Elite 8 stints (2024\u201326).<\/p>\n
In this year\u2019s NCAA D3 semis, his Scranton team ended NYU\u2019s 91-game winning streak and went into the title game with a 32-0 record.<\/p>\n
Lafayette has won just 30 games over the last three seasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an exciting challenge,\u2019 O\u2019Brien said. \u201cOur program and our players are ready to take the next step and with the right culture and right environment and building strong relationships with each other, we\u2019re going to take that next step.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien, 46, preaches a style of his team being tenacious and together.<\/p>\n
He knows the Lehigh Valley. Besides playing Moravian in Landmark Conference games each year, he spent a lot of time in the area while a high school coach at Dunmore High School, just outside Scranton in District 2.<\/p>\n
\u201cI coached at Dunmore for 14 seasons and we played a lot of games at Parkland, and we\u2019d come down here every summer to play at Cedar Beach in the A-Town Throwdown,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful area and I feel like it\u2019s home already. I\u2019m excited to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the challenge in going from Scranton to Lafayette is the same challenge as going through any transition.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing into a new place and a team, it starts with building relationships,\u201d he said. \u201cTo me, everything starts with building relationships. Without the relationship piece, you can only accomplish so much. Relationship-building takes time and I\u2019m looking forward to building those relationships with our players and all of colleagues all over the campus. That\u2019s a prerequisite to any kind of success.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lafayette athletic director Sherryta Freeman said she was looking for a proven winner.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is certainly someone whose experience is going to translate to being the leader of our program,\u201d she said. \u201cThroughout the interview process, I was listening for a plan and how they were going to develop our players. and most importantly, how were they going to take them from where they are today to that championship environment. Ben was able to articulate that very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freeman has hired a Division III coach before who turned out to be a big success in football coach John Troxell, who came from Franklin & Marshall, and led the Leopards to a Patriot League title in his second season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the one thing you can never take away from a candidate is coaching experience,\u201d she said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if it\u2019s D3 or the D1 level, the pieces of building a team are still the same. You still have to evaluate players, you still have to develop, you still have to teach, and to be able to demonstrate success as he has at the D3 level, making the national championship game, he has proven he can build a team at an elite level and he will have the tools to do it here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freeman said the transfer portal hasn\u2019t been a factor with Lafayette women\u2019s basketball.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t lost anyone on the women\u2019s team and that\u2019s a testament to the camaraderie that they have and it shows how much they want to build something together,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cI know Ben has a lot of work ahead of him to meet the current players and meet our recruits and I am hopeful they\u2019ll all want to stay in this environment and want to be something together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Freeman, who played college basketball at Dartmouth, is in her eighth year at Lafayette.<\/p>\n
She enjoys the challenge of hiring coaches who fit best for her school.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot of pressure, but at the same time it\u2019s fun to engage in this process,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s fun to talk to people about why they want to come and work at Lafayette. That\u2019s the good thing about this place. We\u2019ve got a wonderful product and this a place where people want to come. In talking to Ben about this opportunity, it was a lot of fun because he was interested in being here. That partnership and that match was there. So, it\u2019s exciting and a wonderful opportunity to take this program further.\u201d<\/p>\n
And, Freeman acknowledged the rise of women\u2019s basketball and the increasing importance it has on a college athletic program.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe energy around women\u2019s basketball is so much fun to see,\u201d she said. \u201cI was a Division I athlete at Dartmouth, so I love what I am seeing in terms of the attention these women are receiving and the increased marketing and how they been elevated in stature. They are being appreciated for the game they play. And here at Lafayette, it\u2019s a wonderful opportunity because this is a sport that\u2019s clamoring for attention and coach O\u2019Brien will help us generate that attention.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a92026 The Morning Call. Visit mcall.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a><\/p>\n \n Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup.\n <\/p>\n \n Error! There was an error processing your request.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On March 21, Ben O\u2019Brien coached the University of Scranton in the NCAA Division III women\u2019s basketball national…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[5956,178,180,179,726],"class_list":{"0":"post-177557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-scranton","10":"tag-scranton-headlines","11":"tag-scranton-news","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177557\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}