Where do we even start with this? There are too many parts to mention about the 55-54 win the Colorado Mesa University women’s basketball team had over Dixie State on Saturday night.
Effort, grit and heart is what brought CMU out of the depths and into their sixth 20-win season under Taylor Wagner as well becoming the first team to secure an RMAC Tournament berth this season.
“This what we talked about at halftime,” Head Coach Taylor Wagner said. “We said this can either be the worst loss in Maverick lady basketball [since] I have ever been around on our home floor, or this can be the best win.”
The Mavericks were down 23 points at one point to the Trailblazers but the amazing efforts by Sydni Brandon, Dani Turner and whoever else was motivated by the halftime speeches got the job done.
“The leaders spoke up. They got it done and they came out and they made plays,” Wagner said. “They just kept chipping at it and chipping at it and you could start to see the game start to turn in our favor.”
Brandon accomplished a career-best 20 points by going a perfect 11-11 from the free-throw line while also grabbing a season-high 15 boards. However, I don’t think the stats quite sum up the amount of effort Brandon put in to help the Mavericks pull off their biggest comeback win in years.
“They were laughing in our faces the entire game,” Brandon said about Dixie State. “Every time we stepped up to the free-throw line. Every time we did anything they just thought it was the funniest thing in the world. That was fueling me and adrenaline got going and I was like, “I’m not going off.”
After a harmonious comeback, Dani Turner was responsible for the game-tying three that almost blew the roof straight off Brownson Arena. Turner led the team 24 points but her one three-pointer was the dealbreaker.
Let’s just break this down. The Trailblazers were in control of the lead for 95.6 percent of the game and held the Mavericks to 26.5 percent from the field through the first three quarters and outscored CMU 48-32 going into the final quarter.
But then…a little thing called offense happened. CMU shot 50 percent from the field and made 14 free-throws in the fourth. Everything that didn’t in the prior 30 minutes happened in the final ten.
“For me personally I know how it felt losing last year on our home floor and we don’t wanna give up home floor ever,” Dani Turner said. “So we just had to believe in each other coming out in the second half and have this. Play your hearts our and give it everything you have and we knew that we would come out on top.”
Wagner decided to play four guards in the second half and force Dixie State to move in their man-defensive scheme more than they wished. The Trailblazers had only three bench players to work with so four of the starting five was forced to play more than 35 minutes each. By the time the fourth quarter came around, CMU was able to outwork and outplay DSU in every area on the floor.
Sydni Brandon became a one-woman wrecking crew out-rebounding players like Dixie State’s 6’3” Breana Moea’i and 6’1” Chensey Stevens a few times in the second half and then sprinting down court and drawing an And-1 on a couple of occasions.
“Natalie Bartle,” Brandon said referring to the CMU guard who has been out the entire yet due to injury. “She was like, ‘You just need to go. You need to take it to the rim every single time.’ She told me that and I took it and put my head down…just going.”
Brandon and Turner accounted for 75 percent of CMU’s total offense and the two guards were the visual representation of the overall heart that resides within this team. A team that is used to being up 23 points rather than having to comeback from that many down. It was a win that was almost needed in the long run because adversity builds more character than easy blowout wins.
“It definitely was [annoying],” Turner said. “We’re normally the team that gets up and kinda just lays off the gas pedal but to be behind we had to be full throttle the whole time.”
CMU was able to prevent their first regular season home loss since Jan. 26, 2018 while also improving their RMAC record to 16-1 on the year.
