After a win over No. 12 Augustana in the first round of the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference Tournament on Wednesday, the No. 5 Southwest Minnesota State womens basketball team will look to keep its season alive when it faces No. 4 Northern State in the conference quarterfinals at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, S.D. Sunday at 4:30 p.m.

Madison Gehloff led the Mustangs to victory in the first round, scoring a career-high 35 points and grabbing 10 rebounds for her first career double-double in the 93-85 win. She was one of three seniors playing in her final home game as a Mustang, along with Sam Wall and Hannah Parsley. Wall knocked down five 3-pointers to bring her within three of Jenna Borchers’ career program record while Parsley scored 11 points with five assists.

Bri Stoltzman also had 19 points with nine rebounds and six assists in the win. The junior guard, who finished the regular season as the NSIC’s second-leading scorer with 18 points per game, was also named to the NSIC’s first-team all-conference on Thursday while Wall was named second team.

SMSU has an 18-11 overall record and 15-7 conference record on the season. The fourth-seeded Wolves, meanwhile, finished one game ahead at 20-8 overall and 16-6 in the conference standings.

Northern State and SMSU met just once during the regular season when the Mustangs hosted the Wolves for Tropical Night. While the teams finished the season with similar records on paper, they didn’t appear to be on the same level in their head-to-head matchup. The Mustangs led wire-to-wire in the 73-53 win.

Stoltzman and Northern State’s Brynn Alfson led all scorers with 18 points each. Alfson’s 11 rebounds were also a game-high but SMSU’s combined effort of eight rebounds from Elizabeth Wagner — including five on the offensive glass — and seven rebounds each from Stoltzman and Parsley led the Mustangs to a 41-35 advantage on the glass. 

While SMSU has been a team that likes to run fast-paced offense, its defense shined in the head-to-head matchup, holding Northern to 34% from the field and 7% shooting from 3-point range. They also held Madelyn Bragg, the NSIC’s third-leading scorer to 9 points, her first time in single digits all season.

Since then, Bragg has been on a cold spell. She’s finished three of her last four games with 6 or fewer points. The Wolves still went 3-1 in those games, including a win over top-seeded Minnesota State in which Bragg scored 23 points. Yet, they also lost 67-65 to 14th-place Wayne State in their regular-season finale and edged out Augustana by just 3 points the game prior. 

The Mustangs have been playing strong basketball as of late but have struggled to string wins together. They’ve shown flashes every week but haven’t swept a weekend series since Jan. 12-13. Finding that consistency will be key for making a tournament run.

In addition to Stoltzman and Bragg’s offensive battle, leading the teams with 18.0 and 17.4 points per game respectively, scoring depth will be key for the matchup. In the Mustangs’ win over Augustana, its bench scored just 4 points. The last time they finished with more bench points than their opponent was their last matchup against Northern State on Jan. 27, in which they finished with a 9-6 advantage. The fact that SMSU has remained competitive despite its depth disadvantage shows off the scoring prowess of its starters. Yet, with the potential of playing as many as three games in three days, the question of how far the Mustangs can go will be strongly tied to how much they can take the burden off the backs of their starters. 

While the Mustangs did outrebound the Wolves last time around, Northern’s height advantage is still something to keep an eye on. The Mustangs have no starters over 5-foot-9 and Maddie Thorfinsonn is their tallest rotation player at 6-foot-flat. For Northern, meanwhile, Bragg stands at 6-foot-3, Alfson is 6-foot and Alayna Benike is 5-foot-11. While undersized, Rianna Fillipi is also sixth in the NSIC in rebounds per game at 7.1 despite standing at just 5-foot-8. As a team, Northern State ranks third in the conference with a plus-4.3 rebounding margin while SMSU ranks seventh at plus-1.9.

Tipoff in the Pentagon is slated for 4:30 p.m. A radio broadcast of Sunday’s game will be available at 105.1 FM KARL while live stats and video of the game can be found at SMSUmustangs.com