Maybe Brittany Braxton was just fulfilling a psychology course requirement when she gathered her teammates for a little talk prior to last Saturday's game against Dickinson.

Braxton, the vocal leader of Franklin & Marshall's women's basketball team, got the team in the proper frame of mind by playing on the Diplomats' reaction to three earlier season losses.

F&M lost early-season meetings with Muhlenberg, Ursinus and Gettysburg but avenged each of those losses with a homecourt victory.

Since F&M hadn't played Dickinson and was only scheduled to play the Red Devils once, Braxton did a little pretending.

"The first thing I said to the girls when we came out is that we need to play them like we lost on their floor at Dickinson and they beat us by 15-20 points," said Braxton. "Then we went out and played like they had beaten us. Like we owed them something."

The result was a 75-71 victory but that was only the beginning of what would be a very rewarding day. While at a banquet after the Dickinson game, the Diplomats kept one eye on the food and another on the game tracker on their cell phones.

Let's just say that dessert tasted a whole lot better when they learned that Ursinus had beaten Muhlenberg, giving three teams — F&M, Muhlenberg and Dickinson — 14-4 Centennial Conference records.

The tumblers continue to click into place when the Diplomats, by virtue of a tiebreaker, learned that they had finished in first place.

First place. From 6-19 last season to an overall record of 19-6 this season and a top-of-the-conference finish. A search of F&M records indicates that F&M went 8-15 in the 1984-85 season and then 15-8 the next season. But a 13-game turnaround?

"Coming into the season, I knew we would be better," said F&M head coach Ashlee Courter. "I really felt that we would be contending for the playoffs. I never would have dreamed we would be No. 1 and hosting the playoffs, that's for sure."

Yet that's where the Diplomats find themselves, atop the conference standings and set to host this weekend's Centennial Conference semifinals and final. F&M will play the winner of tonight's play-in game between Gettysburg and McDaniel in the second semifinal Saturday at Mayser Gym. That game will start 30 minutes after the Muhlenberg-Dickinson semifinal, slated for 1 p.m. The CC title game will be played at 2 p.m. Sunday at Mayser.

Like a golfer who shoots for the green and ends up having the ball trickle into the cup, the Diplomats' goal this season was the postseason yet they landed in first place.

A confluence of circumstances led to this unlikely but welcome conclusion.

First, Braxton's return and that of conference Player of the Year candidate Sarah Meisenberg was the bedrock. Having Muhlenberg and McDaniel lose the league's co-Players of the Year to graduation helped. But so did F&M's additions, particularly transfer Beth Holt, a guard, and the now-healthy Cara Landolfi, F&M's starting post.

The presence of height off the bench in the persons of Alison Menna and Bradie Vaughn was important, too.

Meisenberg, a junior, is a three-time conference Player of the Week who leads the conference in scoring (18.4 points per game). She is second in the league in assists (4.8 per game) and third in shooting percentage (50.6 percent).

Braxton, one of two seniors along with Jessica Bishop, is fourth in the league in rebounding (8.9 per game). F&M's trip to the top has perhaps meant more to her than to the other Diplomats. It's her first winning record and first trip to the playoffs.

"Something that Coach has pointed out to us, and it's really made the biggest difference, is defense and rebounding," Braxton said. "Those games that we lost, we were too offensive-minded. Coach writes on the board before every game, defense and rebounding. Once that started getting drilled in our heads, we capitalized."

You also can't discount the contributions of 3-guard Amanda Miceli, who scored 13.2 points per game before seeing her season end with a knee injury. Miriam Marcis' defense has been a key, too.

The injury to Miceli and that of guard Jess Feldman (still sidelined) have shown F&M's depth. Sara Wolman stepped into Feldman's role, and Marcis has played more minutes with Miceli out.

If the season has been somewhat magical for the Diplomats, consider Holt's addition as part of the potion.

After a non-basketball school year at Villanova, Holt, a sophomore and Lancaster Catholic grad, was at a summer league game when F&M assistant coach Joe Galvin overheard her saying she was looking to transfer.

"He said, 'Have you considered F&M?' " Holt said.

The next night, Holt played with Courter in the stands and the two met after the game. Holt had found a basketball home.

"I told her, I'm in," Holt said.

Many times, transfers don't gel right away with players on their new team. That was not the case for Holt.

"I really lucked out," she said. "Our chemistry has just grown throughout the season. It's an incredible thing to be part of."

Holt doesn't have the perspective that Braxton has on F&M's grand reversal of fortunes. But she been on enough basketball teams to know when the pieces fall into place.

"We just needed things to come together at the right time," she said.

The product of which has been a 13-game turnaround, a trip to the postseason and first place in the conference.

"Every day we came in working on the same things, the same particulars and never got away from that," Courter said. "We tried to stay consistent in saying that this is Diplomat basketball right down to the smallest things."

E-mail: kfreeman@lnpnews.com