AMARILLO, Texas—With an 84-82 squeaker over Notre Dame Saturday, the NIU women’s basketball team not only scored a “w” in the win column but captured a season-ending moral triumph.

Normally a team wouldn’t be all that content with a seventh-out-of-eight teams finish, but then again, the NIU women’s basketball season has been anything but normal.

When any team goes 23-5 over the major portion of the schedule, a year-finale of one victory in six tries really starts to churn stomachs.

“It’s been a very long last three weeks,” NIU coach Jane Albright admitted. “We were not where we wanted to be, but we were certainly who we wanted to be the majority of the season.”

That’s why the Huskies, who finished 25-10 for the campaign, welcomed their seventh-place showing in the 23rd annual National Women’s Invitational Tournament at the Amarillo Civic Center to subdue some of that gastric frustration.

Especially after NIU dropped its first two games of the three-day tourney, in the same fashion it had lost the previous three—poor starts.

“The games that we’ve lost, we hadn’t gotten a good start,” Albright said. “We hadn’t come out of the starting blocks strong and that really hurts us.”

For 13:52 to be exact, it looked like the top-seeded Fighting Irish weren’t going to allow any relief for NIU.

Notre Dame jumped out to an eleven-point advantage that seemed all to familiar. But junior Dee Dee Jeske just couldn’t digest the deja vu scenerio.

Jeske scored seven of her career-high 22 points in less than a two-minute span that cut the Irish lead to a measly two buckets (39-35) with 3:23 left in the half.

Senior Lisa Foss, the only Huskie named to the NWIT All-Tournament team, took the baton from Jeske and helped NIU race to a one-point lead at intermission. Foss scored eight of her tournament 56 points in the final 2:41. Ironically, Foss needed exactly 56 points in her last three career games to become the first woman in NIU history to score 2,500 points in her career.

“That is just a phenomenal stat,” Albright said. “I’ve said all along that she’s one of the greatest shooters in the game and to score 2,500 points is just awesome.”

The second half of the game turned into a see-saw battle as both teams wanted desperately not to get shut out for the tourney.

Once again, Jeske keyed a Huskie run to put NIU up by an 80-78 tally with three minutes to play. Notre Dame tied it up at 80, but freshman Angela Lockett answered with the front end of a one-and-one.

Dianna Wingis swatted not one, but two crucial ND shots away with under a minute to go. After an Albright time out, Denise Dove hit the biggest three-pointer of the season that turned out to be the game-winner.

“They were running a box-and-one on Lisa, so we used her as a decoy by posting her up low and that created an opening for Denise Dove up top,” Albright said. “And that was as big a three-pointer that she’s ever hit.”

Toby Meeks, also participating in her last game, came up with 10 points, along with six assists. Cindy Conner did not suit up for the game due to a one-game suspension that Albright distributed for “breaking team policy.” Conner had no comment on the situation.