Women's basketball senior guard Nia Torru and the rest of the Cardinals have a chance to make this February a memorable one this weekend.
Of course, having already become the all-time leading scorer in UIW history, Torru will probably be able to look back at this time of her career and smile – but Torru has always had the focus that her team winning the Heartland Conference is more important, and even with the fanfare of setting the record and a balloons in her hand, she still stressed that her record wasn't as important as the team getting wins.
Torru was rewarded for that hard work this week by being named the Heartland Conference Player of the Week.
The Houston native scored 21 points against Texas A&M International University in an 86-41 UIW victory and then scored a season-high 25 points against St. Edward's University in a 66-55 win. Against the Hilltoppers, Torru also had 10 rebounds for a double-double and against both Heartland Conference foes, she had four steals.
In those two games alone, she improved her points-per-game average by nearly an entire point (13.5 to 14.3) in just two games.
With Torru burning up the nets, currently the Cardinals are riding a season-high seven game win streak and are sitting atop the conference with a 12-1 record (18-6 overall). That last loss, back on January 16th, was at the McDermott Center, 48-38, against St. Mary's University, the team currently sitting in second place.
This Saturday at 2 p.m., Torru and the Cardinals head to STMU (11-2 in the conference, 19-6 overall) to lock up first place in the conference and maybe get a little payback for being held to their lowest point-total of the season at the hands of the Rattlers.
By beating STMU, UIW locks up the regular season title and becomes the No. 1 seed in the Heartland Conference Tournament, which will take place at St. Mary's on March 4th-6th. A loss means that the Rattlers will have two victories over UIW and will have the tie-breaker if the two teams finish the conference schedule with the same record. Then, STMU will take the first seed and the Cardinals will be the second seed in the tournament.
The two teams are playing above and beyond the rest of the Heartland Conference (the third place team, Texas-Permian Basin, has a 5-5 conference record and no other team has a record over .500) and are ranked 1-and-2 in scoring margin (UIW ranked first with a +8.2 and STMU in second with +6.6), scoring defense (STMU is first with 54.2 points-against-per-game and UIW is second at 56.5) and rebounding defense (Rattlers are first with 32.4 and UIW is second at 33.8).
The Cardinals, however, are shooting much better at the free throw line, ranked first in the Heartland with a 73.7% (ranked 54th in NCAA Division II) and in field goal percentage, also ranked first in the conference with a 43.5% (ranked 38th in Division II). UIW's free throw percentage is helped by Jasmine Smith's 88.7% accuracy from the charity stripe, which makes her first in the Heartland, but also 9th in NCAA's Division II (and Torru is no slouch, ranked 43rd in the country with an 83.6%).
The Cardinals won last year's conference tournament held at STMU's Bill Greehey Arena, defeating the Rattlers, 61-59, in the final moments on a shot by Smith. It was the first win against STMU that Incarnate Word had managed that season (losing the two regular season meetings) and it gave the Cardinals their first-ever conference title and first-ever trip to the NCAA Division II Tournament.
This weekend, Incarnate Word hopes that they can repeat something like last season's incredible run, repeat as conference champions and make this time of their playing careers the most memorable stretch of all.
