2/25/2024 | Women’s Basketball | Box Score

You never know when that feeling is going to hit.

For the Kansas Wesleyan women’s basketball team it was the fourth quarter of Saturday night’s senior night and regular season finale against York University at Mabee Arena.

Wesleyan hit 10 3-pointers in the final ten minutes, setting a new school record for 3’s in a quarter, and set a new school record for 3-pointer attempts in a game with 42, and tied the school record for 3-pointer makes in a game with 17 as KWU routed York 86-65.

“Shooters shoot, we started feeling it, and it got contagious,” Wesleyan head coach Ryan Showman said. “It didn’t matter who we brought in off the bench or had on the court, they stepped up with confidence and knocked them down. I’m just so proud of this team.”

Senior Jill Stephens just missed the single game 3-pointers record with seven in Saturday’s game, scoring a game high 21 points.

The win secured the No. 4 seed for the Coyotes in next week’s KCAC tournament which begins on Wednesday with quarterfinals. The Coyotes will face No. 5 seed Evangel at 7 p.m. inside Mabee Arena. KWU and Evangel tied in the final regular season standings, but KWU held the tiebreaker in the match-ups.

It was the last regular season home game for four KWU seniors in Ja’Daa Wilson, Jill Stephens, LaMyah Ricks and Daijane Adams.

“They’re an incredible group. They have all impacted our program and our university at different levels,” Showman said. “They’re special people, they mean a lot to me. They trusted me to come here and play for this great university and things are going to be very different without them but I am excited to go into next week with them because we’re not done, we have a lot to play for.”

Wesleyan finished the first quarter on a flurry, leading 11-9 with 4:39 left in the quarter, the Coyotes went on a 12-5 run to extend the lead to nine at 23-14 after a quarter.

It was another 2-point game at 31-29 with 4:52 left in the second, when the Coyotes went on an 8-0 run to take a 39-29 lead with 1:33 left in the half, and a 3 by Odessa Ozuna to beat the half time buzzer sent the Coyotes into the locker room up 42-31.

Wesleyan pushed the lead out to 14 in the third on a Ricks triple, but York cut the difference to five at the end of the third, and cut it to two again at 52-50 when it turned all Coyotes.

Three straight triples by Jill Stephens got the party started extending the lead out to 61-50 with 8:27 left, and suddenly it was 72-52 Coyotes with 6:28 left after more triples coming from Kourtney Kaufman and a bucket by Angel Lee.

Five Coyotes reached double figures as Lee had 18, Kaufman 12, Hampton Williams made it a double-double with 12 and 11 rebounds, and Ozuna had 11. KWU shot 41.6 percent for the game.