Penn State women’s basketball and fans will have an opportunity to experience plenty of high profile women’s basketball this season at the Bryce Jordan Center following the release of the conference opponent format earlier this week. The Lady Lions will face all four of the new Big Ten programs, hosting Oregon and Washington while traveling to face UCLA and USC.
The Lady Lions will also host the Big Ten’s regular season and tournament 2023 champions Ohio State and Iowa. They will not make the return trip to face either program on the road. The Buckeyes and Hawkeyes will both be significantly different teams than in 2023, most notably due to the departure of WNBA No. 1 overall pick Caitlin Clark who finished out her career in Iowa City having broken and set almost countless records while at Iowa.
As for Washington, the Huskies are less than 10 years removed from Clark’s high volume scoring predecessor in Kelsey Plum while Oregon is still only a years from its own scoring sensation that is Sabrina Ionescu. A meeting against the Ducks will mark Penn State’s first as a program, having played each of the other three times on at least three occasions.
Penn State fans will be disappointed that USC is not scheduled to make a trip to State College as the Trojans boast guard JuJu Watkins, something of the heir apparent to Clark as the nation’s top overall player. Times and dates for the schedule will be released at a later date. It is likely that the Lady Lions will play USC and UCLA on the same westward trip.
The Lady Lions wrapped up a historic 2023-24 season posting a 22-13. Penn State, plagued with injuries, hit a heavy skid during the back half of the year but – in spite of missing the NCAA Tournament, managed to make a run to the Final Four of the inaugural Women’s Basketball Invitational Tournament, their first postseason tournament appearance since 2018. Head coach Carolyn Kieger will enter her sixth season at the helm of the Lady Lions in the fall of 2024.
“It goes back to the last four years of building,” Kieger told StateCollege.com earlier in the year. “That doesn’t just happen overnight. Obviously we’ve been trying to build this culture and this foundation and work on habits and chemistry. And some of personnel that we got from the transfer portal was really great synergy for our returners, and I think our maturity and our depth and our experience has really helped.”
“This is the pace of play and the type of mentality that I’ve been trying to get this program to get to. And obviously the last four years we’ve been trying to teach them how to win. And I think for them now is just to believe that they can go play against anybody and beat anybody. They’ve weathered the storm and all the failures and all the lessons that we’ve learned the last four years have added up for this moment to be ready.”
Penn State will enter the 2024 offseason with a handful of new faces in its own right both on the coaching staff and the roster. The Lady Lions will be without each of their Top 3 leading scorers in 2024 with Ashley Owusu being picked up by the Dallas Wings in the WNBA Draft – although was later waived. Owusu was the first Lady Lion drafted since Maggie Lucas during the 2014 draft. Leading scorer Makenna Marisa exhausted her eligibility while third leading scorer Shay Ciezki recently transferred to Big Ten foe Indiana.
The Lady Lions might be in for a rebuilding year, but fans will still have a great opportunity to see quality basketball, hopeful that Penn State will return to that level sooner rather than later.
2024-25 Penn State Women’s Basketball Opponents
Home only: Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Ohio State, Oregon Purdue, Wisconsin and Washington
Away only: Illinois, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, UCLA, USC
Home and Away: Rutgers
