INDIANAPOLIS – The newly-crowned Horizon League women’s champions from Green Bay were a big mess.
That might need explaining. The Phoenix had just swept past Purdue Fort Wayne, 76-63, to win the Horizon League tournament, which is sponsored by Barbasol, the shaving cream folks. Afterward, there was a space set aside with a sign that read “One Shaving Moment” and the Phoenix players were handed a bunch of cans of shaving cream and, well, you can probably guess the rest. Goggles optional.
It’s a @BarbasolShave One Shaving Moment✨#OurHorizon🌇 #MarchStartsHere #HLWBB pic.twitter.com/AKjfBeaLrm
— Horizon League (@HorizonLeague) March 11, 2025
That was one of the rare unkempt moments for Green Bay this season, a team that is a testament to the sturdiness of its program and the skill of its new coach, who was hired with a very high bar overhead. Mostly, the trip has been non-stop to March. There are more good players than ever in women’s college basketball, more good teams than ever, and more chances to lose than ever. But Green Bay has won 22 games in a row. Its margins of victory in the Horizon League tournament were 29, 14 and 13 points, though Purdue Fort Wayne was a struggle for three quarters.
The 29-5 Phoenix will now take that shiny streak to the NCAA tournament, just where they expected to be, and it’d be reasonable if the coach took a big exhale. See the woman wiping the tears from her eyes and the man with a sideline-to-sideline smile? That’s Kayla Karius’ mother and father. See the guy giving the coach a hug and getting assigned to keep track of the game ball? That’s Rick, the husband. They understood what the moment meant Tuesday, given the tricky mission Kayla accepted this season.
Put yourself in her basketball shoes.
You’ve been hired by a program that now has 20 NCAA Tournament trips in its pedigree. The other 10 Horizon League teams have 21 combined. The Phoenix grabbed a bid in 2024 and all seven top scorers returned — but not retired coach Kevin Borseth — so imagine what the fan base expected. Green Bay has a sizable, highly invested following.
There’s something else. Before you were Kayla Karius, married mother of two, you were Kayla Tetschlag and that’s the name all over the Green Bay record book. Yeah, you were a Phoenix star and Horizon League co-player of the year in 2011. You even led Green Bay to the Sweet 16.
Then you headed off to play in Europe before starting your coaching journey through the upper Midwest at places such as Drake and Wisconsin and South Dakota. Now you’re back and you know how this is supposed to go. Green Bay sports fans have had some tough moments. The Packers were quickly out of the playoffs again, down the road the Milwaukee Brewers are in their 43rd season trying to get back to the World Series. And don’t even ask about the men’s basketball program at Green Bay. The Phoenix finished 4-28.
But the women are almost always up to the task, right?
Tuesday, they were.
“It’s somewhat of a feeling of relief,” said Natalie McNeal, who scored 26 points on her way to being named the tournament’s MVP for the second consecutive season. “We felt this feeling last year, so we’ve kind of been chasing it all year.”
They also wanted it for their coach. “She’s an alum,” McNeal said, “and she’s part of the reason why Green Bay is what it is.”
All that went through Karius’ mind when she took the job
“I played for the program. The feeling is the same as a player and as a coach. You know what you’re stepping into. When you’re being recruited to this program, you know what you’re stepping into. We used to say as the years go on, you don’t want this to end on your watch. Not on my watch. I felt the same as a coach. It’s a positive pressure you feel. You’ve got to pour in even a little bit more because you want to see this program continue on and go to new heights while it’s under your watch.
“So I just tapped into the same feeling I had as a player.”
And the outside burden of high expectations in Year 1?
“The less you think about it, the better.”
She walked into a locker room full of veterans who went at things much like the Phoenix did back in her playing days, and immediately knew this was no time for a total renovation.
“All last summer and into the fall, we had that conversation daily. In fact, sometimes we still have that conversation,” she said. “What are we going to keep the same and what are we going to change? I told the players from day 1 when I got there, I’m not coming in and blowing everything up. I’ve seen the success they had. I also played in the program, so this isn’t foreign to me what they’re doing.
“But I’ve had the opportunities to go to some other programs. I do want to bring in some tweaks. I think we can get better at some things, so we’re going to have to meet in the middle. That’s how I approached it from the start.”
To see it pay off this week was beyond satisfying. Always is when a coach takes his or her alma mater into March.
“You want it so bad for your players, but you also want it so bad for this alumni base. That means such a great deal to me,” she said. “My teammates are my best friends still. We would call ourselves the Phoenix Sisterhood and we wanted this today for the whole Phoenix Sisterhood.”
But really, how does a team in today’s basketball win 22 games in a row?
“Daily attention to get better,” Karius said. “Everything that we do is for a purpose.”
Except when the players were handed a bunch of cans of shaving cream Tuesday afternoon. That looked like chaos. The coach stayed dry, though.
