Bold and brash, high-octane BYU women are scoring big and speaking out

PROVO — The image alone just might bring her to tears.

Tegan Graham has one more home game left in her final regular-season game representing the BYU women's basketball team, and the Colgate graduate transfer would love nothing more than to see row after row of filled seats to welcome the No. 20 Cougars into the Marriott Center as they host Gonzaga in a game that will likely decide the West Coast Conference.

Everything else — even playing in that final game — pales in comparison.

"That would probably make me more emotional than any senior night, honestly," said Graham, a graduate student in the school's communications program who wrote her master's thesis on gender and equity in Division I athletics. "I think that scene would mean so much to me because there's such a big gap, and there's so much potential for women's sports, especially women's basketball to grow, and there are so many reasons why that gap should be closed."

It's not that BYU (20-2, 12-1 WCC) hasn't taken enormous strides to improve the team's game day atmosphere; the Cougars average 1,428 fans at their home games, which is likely more than they have in recent years.

The NCAA doesn't keep track of attendance figures for women's basketball the same way it does for the men's game, where BYU finished No. 25 nationally at 12,626 fans per game after the 2019-20 season (figures weren't tracked for the 2020-21 season because most schools played in front of reduced crowds due to COVID-19 concerns).

But the Cougars' average attendance is a hair under the national average of 1,604 in the pre-pandemic 2019-20 season, and is the highest in the West Coast Conference.

Still, seeing the Marriott Center filled with 19,000 fans for big games — like the one BYU faces Saturday against Gonzaga (2 p.m. MT, BYUtv) — is a dream. And Graham and the four other seniors on the BYU women's team would love to see it filled, even if it were the reduced-capacity lower-bowl sellout that includes dropped curtains on the upper seats.

The Cougars took care of business Thursday against LMU — a game played in front of more than 1,000 shrieking grade-schoolers on Kids Day — to keep their home record a spotless 13-0. But the final step is the biggest of the season — and perhaps the career of five standout BYU seniors.

BYU has meant everything to Graham since she left Colgate as a graduate transfer, then took advantage of an extra year of eligibility provided by the pandemic to finish off her career in Provo. And to finish it off, the Cougars will host her family — some of whom she hasn't seen in more than two years — as well as the families of all five seniors in a game featuring Blackout uniforms for the first time at home.

The team posted about the uniforms on Instagram, and more than 4,000 people liked it. BYU hasn't had more than 4,000 people in the Marriott Center all season.

Despite the differences, Graham was quick to add that playing for BYU has been everything she wanted "and more."

"I think this program is what everything that I always dreamed of, in terms of playing Division I basketball," Graham added. "It's honestly the best thing that could've happened to me, basketball-wise, coming to this school. I've genuinely loved playing basketball here. I love coming to practice every day, and I know there are so many college athletes who don't like going to practice every day; I went through that at Colgate.

"That means the world to me, to have this amazing experience, a fun environment, where you love what you do."

Ditto for Paisley Harding, the fifth-year senior back for one final go after graduating and watching her husband Connor transfer to nearby Utah Valley; Maria Albiero, the starting point guard whose mother is in town all week from her native Brazil; and Sara Hamson, the senior from Lindon and daughter of BYU legend Tresa Spaulding who took a reduced role off the bench to power the Cougars' 22-2 start.

"Senior night is the hardest night for a head coach, because of all the great memories you have with those players, and the tough times you've gone through together," said BYU coach Jeff Judkins. "But it's also full of happy times, and I hope Saturday will be a great day for everybody. This team deserves it. Sara deserves it; all of our seniors deserve it.

"This is what college athletics are all about, having athletes like Sara Hamson."

Ending the home slate against Gonzaga, with a chance to finish unbeaten at home for the second-straight season, is only fitting.

"I'm super excited that it's Gonzaga," said Hamson, the one-time WCC defensive player of the year who took advantage of her COVID season to play with her younger sister Heather. "I think it's fun that we can have that challenge for our final home game of my senior year. It's kind of like the climax of our season, and it will now effect if we can win the conference. So many things rely on that Gonzaga game, and I think tha tmakes it even more exciting."

The Cougars have worked to build up a home atmosphere known by few in women's basketball, especially at the non-Power Six level. They've canvassed social media, reaching out to new generations of fans via Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. Judkins has offered free pizza for BYU students to pack the gym like they do for the men's team, and team members have traveled across campus offering hot chocolate on a cold winter day to build connections, as well.

The first 500 fans in the building Saturday afternoon will get free t-shirts, and a voucher with local Jr. Jazz programs can help bolster attendance.

But as far as BYU's home attendance has come, there's still miles to go. The Cougars only recently received a traveling photographer and videographer to help market the team away from home, and there are still inequities between the men's and women's programs at all universities — not limited to, but including BYU.

"There's obviously so much more to be done to facilitate what an awesome team needs," Graham said. "Everybody who comes to our games loves it, so it's all about creating that environment where fans want to come and they have this really cool college experience.

"I think we're headed in the right direction, but we have miles to go."

Harding recently pointed out one of those inequities when she noted on TikTok that the men's basketball team received new laptops, while the women's team was running off old equipment. Such is a localized example to a national story from a year ago, when NCAA president Mark Emmert faced public criticism for lack of weight training areas at the NCAA women's tournament in San Antonio — while the men's tournament was fully staffed and equipped in Indianapolis.

"I think social media is such a game-changer for women's sports, because of the ability it has to set the narrative," Graham said. "Athletes get to control their own narrative; you don't have to go through mainstream media to have your story told, or to have people engage with you.

"We get to tell stories in our own ways," she added.

Emmert, for his part, admitted the organization "dropped the ball" and promised to make the improvements to the NCAA's handling of its women's championships; the organization recently unveiled plans to use the "March Madness" moniker for both tournaments, whereas before it had been confined to the men's tournament. Media coverage has also seen a slight — even incremental — uptick featuring female athletes, as well.

But there's still miles to go in gender equity. And players aren't going to stop talking about it, either.

"Every area we can put our foot into, we're trying to do it. And our team has been very vocal this year about things that happened," Graham said. "In the past, it's been like, 'hush-hush woman; know your place.' Now we can speak up and know our place.

"People need to know about this stuff, and how we feel about it. We feel a type of way, and we're going to say it."

All of it to help send out the senior class of 2022 on the right note — a team that, in a lot of ways, deserves to be recognized. The Cougars were picked to finish first in the conference, and rose to the highest regular-season ranking in program history at No. 16.

Currently projected as No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament by ESPN's Charlie Creme, BYU currently ranks No. 4 nationally in scoring margin at plus-20 points per game, 10th in scoring offense at 78.9 points, and No. 3 in field-goal percentage with 47.7%. They also share the ball, ranking second with 19.9 assists per game and fourth in assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.47.

It's a fun team, one with players that know their roles — from high-scoring Shaylee Gonzales to tough, rugged Harding to dime-disher Albiero and a walking double-double in Lauren Gustin.

Maybe more important, though, is their friendship: this group seriously loves playing with and being around one another.

"We genuinely love each other and enjoy spending time with each other, so we go to meals, hang out in each other's hotel rooms," Graham said. "A lot of teams talk about it. But our team genuinely like each other. And you can see that on the court, too."

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