Despite loss, Boise State women’s hoops ‘chemistry’ shines against MW leaders
Wednesday night’s top-of-the-conference clash between the Boise State women’s basketball team and San Diego State may not have gone the Broncos way, but it certainly showed how far the program has come in recent years.
And it showed that BSU is in contention to win the Mountain West Tournament next month.
The Broncos entered the tilt at ExtraMile Arena in second place in the standings, trailing only the visiting Aztecs, who had lost just one game in conference play all season.
Despite Boise State (22-7, 13-5) leading for large stretches of the game, including most of the first half, San Diego State (23-4, 17-1) eventually pulled out a 66-64 win.
“We’ve just got to play a little bit harder, a little bit better, and we’ve got a great group of kids that have gone through this for four years,” Boise State head coach Gordy Presnell said after the game.
When Presnell says “four years,” he’s not exaggerating. The concept of a college basketball team in today’s transfer portal era having a core group of seniors who’ve been there since the start seems unimaginable, but Boise State has managed it.
Four of the Broncos’ five starters on Wednesday night were four-year seniors with the program. Not only that, all four of them have over 1,000 career points: Natalie Pasco (1,519), Tatum Thompson (1,200), Dani Bayes (1,164) and Mya Hanson (1,024),
“I don’t know any other program in the country that’s got four seniors that have scored 1,000 points each, all at the same school,” Presnell said. “And that’s what we’ve tried to do, is build a culture here that people want to come back.”
Unsurprisingly, it was the seniors who stepped up on Wednesday night.
Guards Thompson and Pasco led the Broncos with 14 points each, while sophomore forward Libby Hutton was just behind them with 13. Thompson also had a game-high nine rebounds and tied with Hansen for a game-best four assists. Bayes also had a productive night, getting seven points, five rebounds and three assists in 35 minutes.
“Having chemistry for four years for four different players is definitely helpful with leadership and knowing what’s going on, offensively and defensively,” Thompson told the Idaho Statesman after the game. “It’s definitely a big part of our team.”
Wednesday night’s game could have been scary for the Broncos, given they’d lost to the Aztecs by 29 points, 83-54, on Dec. 20. Instead, they came out and played lockdown defense, holding SDSU to just eight points in the first quarter.
The Aztecs hit just one 3-pointer the entire half, and it came from a bank shot at the halftime buzzer that resulted in a 29-21 lead for the Broncos. However, that shot seemed to open the floodgates for the Aztecs, who opened the second half on a 10-0 run to force Presnell into an early timeout.
“We lost the game in the first five minutes of the third quarter,” the coach said.
The Broncos retook the lead out of the timeout and sparred back and forth with the Aztecs for the rest of the game, both leading and trailing by as many as six points. San Diego State would ultimately hold the lead when it mattered most, forcing Boise State to send the Aztecs to the free-throw line three times in the final minute.
The victory sealed the Mountain West regular season title for San Diego State. Boise State is tied for second with Colorado State and UNLV, with New Mexico just a game back.
Being in such a position might come as a surprise to some. As recently as 2022, the Broncos finished 8-21, but there’s been steady improvement since the current crop of seniors arrived ahead of the 2022-23 season.
And if the Broncos happen to come up against the Aztecs again in the Mountain West Tournament next month, they might finally overcome a team that’s sat atop the conference ever since Thompson, Pasco, Bayes and Hanson arrived.
“We’ll definitely have pretty good confidence seeing our growth from that first (San Diego State) game to the second game,” Thompson said. “But I think it’s good for us to stay humble, but also use our confidence and use it as fire to keep going during the season.”
This story was originally published February 25, 2026 at 9:45 PM.
