Watch her work: No. 19 BYU women's basketball highlights tourney push across Utah

PROVO — Moments after No. 19 BYU women's basketball hammered conference rival Gonzaga 63-39 in front of a school-record crowd, Tegan Graham grabbed the mic, smiled and looked up into the lower-bowl capacity crowd inside the 19,000-seat Marriott Center and wiped a tear from her eye.

"Do you think people want to watch women's sports?" she shouted to a thunderous applause.

The question hit different from Graham, not only because the Colgate graduate transfer was celebrating senior day Saturday afternoon. The native New Zealander also wrote her master's thesis on gender equity in Division I athletics, which she defended Wednesday.

She knows the challenges still ahead of women's sports in terms of reaching full equality with the men's game. But for one afternoon in Provo, the vision of what women's sports in America can be — strong, but with a way to go — stared her back in the face.

To see the crowd of 6,289 fans inside the Marriott Center for one of her games, completely unrelated to the men's basketball team that was on the road at Saint Mary's at the time, struck a nerve.

"I am very, very passionate about this subject," she said. "I think there's such a big gap, and there's so much potential for women's sports, especially basketball, to grow. And there are so many reasons why that gap should be closed."

Separate but equal has always been the mantra in comparing men's and women's sports, particularly in basketball. But for far too long, the emphasis has seemed to be more on the "separate" than the "equal."

So why aren't more people talking about women's basketball in this state?

"I don't know; why don't you guys talk about that more?" asked Paisley Harding, grabbing a nearby TV reporter's microphone and yelling into the camera, half-joking but also with an air of frankness.

One by one, or even 6,000 fans at a time, the BYU women's basketball team is fixing that. From the student section that has more than tripled in size to the young girls like Harding's best friend Payton who shows up every game to watch her idols, the Cougars are taking names and extending invitations to see the best show in town — the one that ranks 11th nationally in scoring offense with 78.2 points per game and third in scoring margin at 20.2 points.

"It's a different game. And we're not here to compare one team against the other," Harding said. "Both teams can be incredible; there's space at BYU for both men's and women's basketball teams to be incredible.

"But I think people want to watch us. There's a stigma with some trolls on Instagram, but I just laugh at those. I don't think it's a big deal. The real ones know what it's like to be here at the Marriott Center."

The same goes for women's basketball programs across Utah. In a season where men's basketball has mostly underwhelmed at the state's seven Division I universities, the women's game has largely picked up the slack.

BYU is a projected top-five seed in the NCAA Tournament, which will expand to feature 68 teams to match its men's counterpart this year for the first time in NCAA history. The Cougars boast a 23-2 record, including a 13-1 mark in West Coast Conference play in addition to wins over Fresno State, Arizona State, Washington State, West Virginia, Florida State and Utah for a No. 9 NET ranking.

Those same Utes are also projected in the field, currently clinging to a No. 9 seed by ESPN bracketology expert Charlie Creme with a 16-9 record, a 7-6 mark in Pac-12 play, and a No. 25 NET rating.

Further south, Southern Utah is 16-10 overall with a 12-5 record in Big Sky play — just 1.5 games behind Idaho State and Montana State for the conference crown with three games remaining.

In between them is Utah Valley, which is riding a four-game winning streak before the biggest stretch to end the regular season for the Western Athletic Conference upstarts looking toward its second NCAA Tournament berth in program history.

The Wolverines (13-12, 8-6 WAC) hit their final conference road trip against Cal Baptist and Seattle tied for fourth with Abilene Christian in the league table, and while catching Stephen F. Austin (23-3, 14-0 WAC) is likely too much for any team, a top-four seed in the conference tournament in Las Vegas is within reach for a team that qualified for the program's first NCAA Tournament a year ago.

That's a big leap from where the Wolverines were shortly after Christmas, when they were in the middle of a six-game losing skid that included the first three games of conference play.

"I think the biggest thing our girls have done was stay committed to playing better defensively," UVU coach Dan Nielson said of the four-game streak that includes a 58-50 win at second-place Grand Canyon. "That's been really important. They've bought in to our defense, and you can see their willingness to just compete.

"X's and O's, we were fine. But the will to want to beat the person across from you wasn't always where it needed to be. If you've watched our games the last couple of weeks, it's definitely there."

Like BYU, Utah Valley is also winning games with defense, holding opponents to just 59.2 points per game and averaging nearly seven steals per contest. The Wolverines are led by standout guards Maria Carvalho and Madison Grange, who are also two of the top three scorers behind former Roy High star Josie Williams at 13.7 and 10.7 points per game, respectively.

"We've had to mix in more zone than I like, but we've bought into it and been flexible, and I think you see that in finding the right kid that fits it," Nielson said. "All of them love the fact that we care about defense and how we play defense."

Defense was on display in the Wolverines' 99-59 win over in-state rival Dixie State on Saturday, just as it was five miles up the road in Provo.

For at least one afternoon, a record-setting crowd saw what women's sports can be as BYU hosted its top challenger in the WCC in Gonzaga and put on a defensive clinic. Led by lethal assassin Shaylee Gonzales, the sophomore who on Wednesday was named one of 10 semifinalists for the Becky Hammon Mid-Major Player of the Year award, the Cougars held the Zags to 1-of-11 shooting in the second quarter en route to a 27-17 halftime lead and never looked back.

For one afternoon, fans didn't just see women's basketball players, they saw basketball stars, regardless of gender.

Equal, not just separate.

And maybe there were more than the official 6,289 that will be logged in the program's official record books.

"I knew we'd have a really good crowd," said BYU coach Jeff Judkins of the senior-day crowd. "I thought we had more than 6,000 people, to tell you the truth; I think people snuck in here and didn't buy a ticket.

"But what an atmosphere. This atmosphere was more impressive than the one at Gonzaga. It was louder. Even Lisa (Fortier, Gonzaga coach) said this was an awesome crowd, best I've ever seen it. … And the girls deserve it. They work hard. They do whatever they have to do. To see that and to have this crowd feel the emotion and the hard work these guys have done is well worth it."

That kind of crowd played a key role in bringing back three would-be graduated seniors for another season. The Cougars just wanted to do something special — and with two games left in the regular season, including a shot at an outright West Coast Conference championship for just the second time since joining the WCC in 2011 beginning Thursday at Santa Clara (7 p.m. MST, WCC Network), there's plenty of time to do just that.

"They came back for this reason. I know they came back for me, but mainly for this," Judkins said with a chuckle. "In life, very few people can have dreams. But they saw this and they felt this was going to happen to them — from day one.

"That's what they are. They came back to be able to really make a mark, and this is part of it. But there are many, many more parts of it."

The sky's the limit for BYU women's basketball, which features a pair of high-percentage guards in Gonzales and Harding, a deep threat in Graham, one of the nation's top rebounders in Gustin, and a defensive menace capable of changing the game off the bench in Hamson.

If last year's team exuded Sweet 16 potential before having its season cut short by eventual national runner-up Arizona in the second round, this year's squad has even higher expectations.

And Harding, never one to back down from a challenge, isn't afraid to speak it into existence.

"I think we could go all the way to the championship this year," she said. "Nothing can really stand in our way when we're working together as a team and when we're on our A-game. We're a pretty incredible team."

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