From the opening tip, the general feeling was that this particular game was going to come down to the final possession.

At the end of overtime, both coaches could easily agree on one particular point: It was a good college basketball game.

The definition of good, however, carried different denotations.

"Wow, where do I start?" Fort Lewis College women's basketball coach Mark Kellogg rhetorically asked himself in his opening statement at the start of the postgame press conference.

"It was a pretty good basketball game. They made one more play than we did. It was one of those games where it was going to come down to one more stop, one more basket. They did one of each."

Colorado State University-Pueblo defeated the Fort Lewis College women 70-68 in overtime of a Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Shootout semifinal Friday afternoon at the Colorado State Fair Events Center in Pueblo.

Thunderwolves coach Kip Drown knew exactly where to start his press conference.

"I thought it was a really great college basketball game," he said. "We feel fortunate, blessed to come away with the win."

It was an auspicious start for the Skyhawks, the No. 1 seed in the postseason tournament. They won the opening tip, missed their first three shots, all from behind the 3-point line, but Erin Kerr finally cashed in three offensive rebounds with a 3 from the wing.

Lindsay Black countered with a 3-point play, a baseline jumper and a free throw.

Laura Haugen then hit a 3 from the top of the key, and Lauren Redfern and Audrey George worked the high-low for George's layup and an 8-3 advantage.

Black countered with another 3-point play, a layup and a free throw.

CSU-Pueblo scored its first lead of the game with a little less than 13 minutes to play in the first half after Rachel Espinoza's wide open layup in broken coverage capped a 6-0 run after a media timeout.

Redfern got it back with a layup in transition.

Black answered with a 2 in the paint `85 and so it went.

"It's a game of cycles, especially when you have two good teams going at each other," Drown said. "It's a game of runs, and, of course, the shortest ones on defense and the longest ones on offense usually win."

Kerr's 3-point attempt from the top of the key rimmed out at the end of the half, and CSU-Pueblo led 34-32 at halftime.

Haugen, three minutes in, made good from that spot on the opposite end of the floor to start the second half. She scored six of the Skyhawks' first eight points in the second half to give the "home" team a 38-36 lead.

CSU-Pueblo, however, which played several of its home games at the State Fair Events Center, pleased the partisan crowd with a point-for-point effort against the RMAC regular-season champions.

"We haven't played particularly well here at the Events Center," Drown said. "For us it's a neutral floor. I know everyone else will say 'right, right, right.'"

CSU-Pueblo took its final lead of the second half with a hard-earned layup by Sarah Staggs with 2:14 to play. She missed an easy layup, then grabbed her own miss and scored the putback.

Staggs was fouled, made the free throw, and the Thunderwolves led 60-58.

Each team then traded defensive stops and subsequent 30-second timeouts.

Kerr broke the Skyhawks' huddle with a 3 from the key and a 61-60 lead with a minute to play in regulation.

Staggs was fouled with 45 seconds to play and made the front end of a double bonus situation to tie the game at 61.

Fort Lewis squandered its final possession with a shot clock violation.

CSU-Pueblo missed two shots on its final possession and the buzzer sounded with two Skyhawks players knocking the ball out of Staggs' hands underneath the Thunderwolves' basket.

Drown was livid that a foul wasn't called on the play.

"I don't really remember," Drown said cautiously of his post-regulation speech. "I was a little fired up.

"I think I said something like we're not going to let them take this game away from us."

After a pair of free throws by Espinoza to start the extra period, Haugen hit a 3 from the key to give the Skyhawks a 64-63 lead.

Staggs scored an offensive rebound - her seventh - and putback to give the Thunderwolves a 65-64 lead.

Allison Rosel answered with an offensive rebound and putback of her own to regain a 66-65 advantage.

After turnovers on each team's next possession, Haugen, with 2:17 to play, penetrated the lane and scored a tough left-handed layup high off the glass to make it a three-point game.

A full minute ticked off the clock, and all the Thunderwolves had to show for it was a shot clock violation.

Still, it was a one-possession game.

"We haven't had a one-possession game all year long," Kellogg said. "We haven't gone through this before."

Jonnie Draper tied the game at 68 with a 3 from the wing at 1:02.

Staggs blocked Rosel's shot on the other end of the floor.

Black thread a pass across the high post to Mary Rehfeld, and Rehfeld scored the game-winning basket on an all-too easy layup down the lane with 13.9 seconds to play in overtime.

Kellogg called a full timeout to design one last play.

"They had been doubling Allison all night, so we had planned on that," he said. "The idea was to get the ball to Allison in the low post, then to kick out for the open look."

Rosel, indeed, was doubled on the block, so she kicked to Kerr on the wing. Kerr swung the ball to Haugen at the top of the key, and Haugen passed her shot to Katie Mackey to the free throw line extended on the opposite side of the floor.

Mackey's jump shot at the buzzer was blocked by Rehfeld, her first blocked shot of the season.

"I guess they recovered a little bit quicker than we expected," Kellogg said.

"We knew we had to get that stop," Rehfeld said. "We were really connected with each other on the floor. We were jumping, talking and getting out after the ball."

How much ball did she get?

"Oh, I got all ball," Rehfeld said with a broad smile.

"That was a really tough call," said Drown, who chose to focus on Rosel on the last play of the game rather than defend against the loss and the perimeter.

"A 2 to tie and a 3 we lose `85 we got stops when the game was on the line."

CSU-Pueblo, 20-9, will play in today's RMACShootout wo-men's championship against Nebraska-Kearney, a 59-58 winner over Metro State on Friday night.

The FLC women, 26-3, now will wait for the NCAAregional assignments due out Sunday night.

Click here to send an email to the author