(John Barker Photo)
Senior Day is a big game for any basketball program, but it is a celebration that has lost some of its luster with the prominence of the transfer portal and players not playing their entire careers at one spot.
That wasn’t the case for Malene Pedersen, the only one of Wyoming’s four seniors who spent her entire career in Laramie. She certainly made the most of her final game in the Arena-Auditorium, as she finished with a game-high 20 points and five assists to lead the Cowgirls to defeat Grand Canyon in both teams’ regular-season finale.
“I love close games, I love the competitiveness about it,” Pedersen said. “We stepped up a lot from the last game that we played them, so I’m just proud of our team.”
The Cowgirls also saw massive performances from their other three seniors, all of whom played crucial roles in the victory. Henna Sandvik paced Pedersen with 16 points while adding four assists of her own, Logann Alvar added two points and five crucial rebounds and Aurore Eyango played big minutes at the point guard position and was a thorn in the side of the Lopes all night defensively.
“They’ve all just continued to build off the beginning of this year,” Ezell said of the trio. “I think more than anything, they buy into what this program’s about, what we do here, how we do it, how you carry yourself and understanding it’s bigger than just one person.”
The win moved the Cowgirls to 10-19 overall and 7-14 in league play, as the Cowgirls are locked into the eight-nine seed matchup this Saturday in the opening round of the Mountain West tournament.
The Cowgirls will have a big opportunity to advance to the quarterfinals if they play anywhere near the level they did defensively in this game.
“When we get stops and play hard on defense, that kind of contributes and gets us running more on offense,” Pedersen said.
The win for the Cowgirls was anything but pretty, but that’s exactly how they like it. Ezell noted that the contest was a prime example of their “Cowgirl Tough” mantra, something the Cowgirls have prided themselves on all season.
“I think this [win] is the epitome of the Cowgirl toughness, where you gotta just grind out the win and doing it for your seniors,” Ezell said.
The Cowgirls initially jumped out to a 24-19 halftime lead, completely shutting the Lopes’ offense down. The Lopes shot just 7-of-32 (21.9%) from the field and 2-of-12 (16.7%) from deep in the opening half.
The Lopes completely flipped the script in the third quarter, however, as their offense suddenly came to life. They scored more points than they did in the entire first half with a 27-point third quarter. The Lopes had at one point led by as much as seven points in the quarter, as they seemed poised to spoil the Cowgirls’ Senior Day despite an abysmal opening half.
The seniors were not about to let that happen.
The Cowgirls would overcome that seven-point deficit and would fittingly win the contest by forcing the Lopes to shoot a tough, contested game-winning 3-pointer in the dying seconds, one that wouldn’t even strike the rim and careened out of bounds just as the buzzer sounded.
“That’s where we started to lean on each other,” Ezell said of the Cowgirls’ second-half comeback. “That’s what I said in the timeout is, ‘You got to all be there for each other.’”
“That’s when we really started believing in each other, being there for each other and I thought that was the turning point.”
Though it’s been an up-and-down season for the Cowgirls, they’re confident that if they play similar to how they did in this game, anything can happen at the conference tournament.
“There’s very few teams in this league that we haven’t been in a [close] game with, and if you don’t get yourself in a big hole who knows where some of those games go,” Ezell said.
“We can play with anybody that shows up on that court, and if we show up with that kind of confidence and that kind of execution, you never know where the moment will fall.”
