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This season: Despite losing their star point guard, Kat Lyons, to Maryland, and her replacement, Anna DeFrancesca, to a knee injury, the Villains went 27-6 and won their third straight 1-A state championship.

All of them have come with Robinson as coach. He's 150-32 in six seasons at Bishop McGuinness.

Into the fire: Robinson scheduled a tough nonconference schedule, including games in Georgia, Maryland and Ohio. That gave the Villains' record a hit, but it prepared them for the rigors of the playoffs. "My biggest fear coming in was that two state championships would make us think it's easy and that we can walk over someone," Robinson said. "We had to find someone or something that would make us focus the whole season. And I felt the best way to do that was to play as many good teams as I could find."

Turning point: In their regular-season finale against Dudley, the Villains took a seven-point lead into halftime but wound up losing 54-47, snapping a five-game winning streak.

Robinson said it eliminated a sense of complacency for the team.

McGuinness won its final nine games by an average of 27 points.

"If we had won that game," Robinson said of the loss to Dudley, "we would not have won a state championship."

Staying power: "We had a lot of ups and downs," Robinson said, "but the foundation our program was built on allowed our team to stay at an even keel all year. Our program, not our team, matured to last for years to come."