Lady Jackets Pull Away from Mustangs for Fifth Straight Win (Feb. 20, 2004)
Box Score

BILLINGS, MT – It’s good to be home.  That has to be the consensus feeling among the MSU Billings Lady Yellowjackets, who downed Western New Mexico 80-73 for their fifth straight win of the season Friday night. 

It’s the first time this year that MSUB has won five games in a row, and a newfound offensive balance can take at least as much credit for that as the longest home stand of the season.  Five players scored double figures Friday night in only the Jackets’ seventh home game since December 1. 

“We’ve had some adversity this year,” said Yellowjacket head coach Melissa Slone.  “When you have adversity, a team can either pull together or pull apart.  I think we’ve seen that our team has pulled together this last week, and our chemistry on the floor has been better.  We have players buying into the system and playing on the same page, and good things are happening because of that.”

In the Yellowjackets’ most balanced offensive outing of the season, the inside-outside combination of their two post players and five guard rotation made it tough for the Mustangs to come up with many key defensive stops.  Center Robyn Milne and forward Tanya Petersen were effective on both ends of the floor while playing against one of the best post players in the West Region, Mustangs center Ivana Stojkovic. 

Stojkovic, who had totaled 54 points in the week’s two previous games, got off to another fast start Friday night with a first-half double-double.  She scored 16 points and 10 rebounds while playing all 20 minutes of the opening half.  Her turnaround jumpers in the paint and her fade away baseline shots were nearly unstoppable as she connected on 8 of 12 attempts from the field to keep the Mustangs close at the break, trailing just 37-35 

“We started off with Tanya guarding (Stojkovic) so Robyn could drop down and help,” said Slone.  “At halftime, Robyn asked to guard her and Robyn asked to post, so we let her.  Robyn was up to the challenge and did a great job.”

Milne held Stojkovic to nine points and just four rebounds after halftime.  On the offensive end, the tandem of Milne and Petersen became the unstoppable force, helping the Yellowjackets shoot over 60 percent from the field.  Eleven of Petersen’s team-high 21 points came in the second period, as did ten of her career-high 16 rebounds.  Milne netted a dozen of her 18 points in the second half, many coming on over the top feeds from Petersen, who also had seven assists. 

“Tanya has really grown this year,” said Slone.  “Our post players have transformed.  They’ve gotten more physical.  Tanya has gotten comfortable with our offense, and she and Robyn work very well together.”

With Petersen and Milne scoring from all angles in the paint (they were a combined 16 of 25 in the game), the Yellowjacket guards had one of their best shooting nights of the season.  Sophomore Jenny Langford knocked down four 3-pointers, three of which came in the first half, and the Jackets were 8 of 17 from behind the arc as a team.

After four ties and seven lead changes in the first half, MSU Billings never trailed in the second half.  Petersen and Milne scored the Jackets’ first ten points out of the locker room as MSUB built a 47-41 lead at the 16:22 mark.  They stretched the lead to double digits at the midpoint of the half after Langford, Shannon Harvey and Jenny Auer each knocked down 3-pointers in a span of two minutes.  The Yellowjackets led by as many as fourteen points late in the game before a Western New Mexico rally made the game interesting in the final minutes.

The Mustangs abandoned the paint for the arc to cut into the Yellowjackets’ lead.  They hit four 3-pointers between the 9:00 and 4:00 marks to draw to within seven.  Tamara Goodliffe made two of her three triples during that stretch and finished the game with 16 points.  The 6-3 Stojkovic also stepped out to hit a late 3-pointer.

Back-to-back layups from Stojkovic and Goodliffe brought the Mustangs to within five points with 1:49 to play.  The game was put out of reach after a long pass from Auer to a streaking Harvey for a breakaway layup with 39 ticks on the clock put the Yellowjackets back up by seven.  The Mustangs missed three 3-point attempts in the final 30 seconds.

Harvey and Auer each finished with eleven points and handed out seven and six assists respectively.  The six assists were Auer’s career high.  Langford scored all twelve of her points from behind the arc and has now made 62 three-pointers this season, tying her sister Joan for the third highest single season total in school history. 

In the recent five game home stand, the Yellowjackets averaged 79 points a game, and shot 53 percent from the field.  Petersen, Milne and Langford have all averaged double figures scoring during that stretch, with Petersen scoring 21 points a night.  She now averages a team-high 14.9 points per game for the season.  Milne is close behind, scoring at a 14.2 ppg clip while also adding 11.7 rebounds a game.

The Yellowjacket wrap up the regular season on Monday when they host Montana State-Northern at 7:00 p.m. at Alterowitz Gymnasium.  They will then wait and watch over the final two weekends of the college season to see if their late season charge has given them enough momentum to sneak back into the West Region poll.

Click HERE for photos of the Lady Yellowjackets vs. Western New Mexico, February 20, 2004