Photo by Luke Zayas/True To The Cru
BELTON — UMHB’s seniors knew they had just one game left inside the Mayborn Campus Center when they took the court for Saturday’s regular season finale against Howard Payne, and they were intent on making it count.
But even they didn’t know just how memorable—and historic—senior day would turn out to be.
Matched up against the same HPU squad that held The Cru to a 7-of-21 mark from 3-point range in a Jan. 31 road loss, UMHB’s senior trio of Josie Bruder, Mia Lozoya, and Katelen Brooks more than made up for those missed shots inside Brownwood Coliseum a month earlier, torching the nets from long range in a 90-65 victory over the Lady Jackets.
Paced by those three, UMHB broke the NCAA all-divisions record for consecutive 3s in a single game, hitting 14 in a row between the 9:17 mark of the first quarter and the 5:44 mark of the second as the hot shooting proved contagious. The Crusaders simply could not miss, and HPU’s zone defense was powerless as UMHB surged in a high-scoring first half.
The 13-minute stretch wrote the story of the game, with the Crusaders’ relentless offensive attack breaking the Division III consecutive 3s record of 10—set by Stanislaus State in a 1988 game against Point Loma—by the 8:58 mark of the second quarter. That came when Lozoya drilled a corner 3 just 30 seconds after Katelen Brooks knocked one down from the top of the arc.
With 7:19, Lozoya sank another one from long-range for a 39-21 lead, followed by yet another from Brooks, before point guard Danae Gonzalez capped the historic spurt with her first swish from beyond the arc. In doing so, Gonzalez both tied the UMHB single-game record for 3s and set a new NCAA record for consecutive 3-point field goals, pulling The Cru’s streak past NC State’s all-divisions record of 13, set on March 1, 2020.
“I don’t think we were necessarily keeping track,” said Brooks, who had three 3s and 14 points in that stretch. “It was just one after the other. Once you have one, you have that mindset of, ‘I can hit the next’. Then when it just keeps going, you have that all-time confidence that the next one’s going in.”
Lozoya set a new team program record on UMHB’s second possession of the third quarter, swishing a high-arcing shot from the right wing for The Cru’s 15th trey of the afternoon. The Cru ended up with 19, smashing the previous high mark of 14, which was written into the record books on Feb. 8, 2020 in a similarly-dominant win over Howard Payne.
“I think it was the reality of senior day, the reality of it being the last time they get to play on the court,” UMHB head coach Katie Novak-Lenoir said postgame when asked what flipped for her team, who shot below 30% from 3-point range in three of its previous four games. “I started five seniors together. They were pretty pumped about that.”
UMHB put 90 points on the board for the first time since Feb. 1, 2024, doing so while shooting above 50 percent as a team for only the second time this season. Bruder led the team with 18 points, with Lozoya’s 17 and Brooks’ 16 contributing heavily. Gonzalez, playing in her first game since Jan. 17, added 10 points and four assists in 21 minutes off the bench.
“It just happened in the flow of the game,” Novak-Lenoir said, when asked about her team’s offensive showcase. “We weren’t really trying to shoot 3s. But we have that ability. I’ve seen that ability a lot of times in practice throughout the year. We might have one person shoot really well, but we got them all clicking today.
“I think there was a lot of readiness to prove ourselves, especially after losing to them at their place basically at the buzzer.”
On an afternoon when the bulk of the highlights came from beyond the arc, the secret to UMHB’s success began inside the arc, with The Cru’s consistent paint touches. Regulalrly working the ball inside opened up the kick-out 3s that UMHB converted on so well, as HPU’s defense spent much of the first half chasing passes around the perimeter, pulled inside by the interior pass and unable to apply much pressure on the close-out.
To emphasize that piece of the gameplan, UMHB spent its few days of practice coming out of Tuesday’s loss to Hardin-Simmons specifically drilling that. In order to shoot it on a possession, you had to have a paint touch first.
“We made it a big emphasis in practice this week that you have to get a paint touch in order to score the ball,” noted Brooks, who made her 83rd appearance in four seasons at UMHB. “I think that translated into this game and just made it really easy for us to catch and shoot. We do a lot of shooting workouts in general, but getting those paint touches so [the defense] collapses and then having those wide-open shots…it’s just beatiful basketball.”
By halftime, UMHB led 51-27, the result of shooting 60.7 percent from the field as a team while HPU shot just 37.9% with 10 turnovers. 14 of The Cru’s first-half points came off turnovers while the Lady Jackets failed to score off of any of UMHB’s five turnovers. The blistering shooting percentage was paired with 12 assists, two more than the Crusaders tallied in the entirety of Tuesday’s tilt at HSU.
They cooled off in the third, though only mildly. After Lozoya opened the second half with back-to-back scores, Bruder followed with a 3 of her own, then tipped back a miss a minute later. HPU, who trailed by as many as 29 early in the quarter, whittled the deficit to 17 with 1:55 left thanks to Azaylee Santos’ 3, as the Lady Jackets made seven 3s of their own in the contest.
But The Cru refused to simply coast to the finish line. Senior Amillion Fowler drove inside for a layup on the ensuing possession and Brooks scored on a short-range floater just before the quarter buzzer, pushing the advantage back beyond 20, 74-53.
The commanding lead never dipped below 19 again. In fact, The Cru led by 20 or more for the final 6:38, as the seniors soaked up their final minutes inside the Mayborn Campus Center. Bruder connected on her fourth 3 of the day with 6:08 to go, pushing UMHB above the 80-point mark, and two minutes later, Fowler dished out her fourth assist, finding Madyson Solis for a short-range shot and an 83-60 lead.
The hosts closed on a 7-1 run, putting an exclaimation point on the victory when sophomore post Kyley Atkinson swished her first 3-pointer of the season, garnering a cheer from the Crusader bench.
There wasn’t a better day to see the ball go in the basket as much as it did than in the finale of the regular season slate. Because with the final buzzer on Saturday came a turning of the page in the 2025-26 season. Only one more game is guaranteed for Brooks and her teammates: Friday’s ASC Tournament semifinal against Hardin-Simmons.
But they will make the trip west remembering one thing: win two and they’re into the NCAA Tournament, dancing in March as the ASC champions. Everything is still in front of them. Playing in a wide-open league in which they have competed especially well down the stretch—UMHB is 2-2 over its last four with both losses by six points or less—making a run in the league tournament is an attainable reality. Especially if the Crusaders shoot it like they did on Saturday afternoon.
“We need to be peaking at the right time,” Novak-Lenoir said of the confidence her team will take from the win. “The past doesn’t matter. What I like is that our practices have been consistently good, and I feel like we’re actually getting better as a team. Anything can happen at this point of the year.”
“Obvioiously, we’re on a big high right now, and we have a lot of confidence going into [the ASC Tournament],” Brooks added. “We try not to think about what our record shows because it can be anyone’s game. Whoever shows up with the biggest heart and wants to win that game is who is going to win.
“We have a lot of confidence going into next week that we’re just going to lay it all on the court.”
What an awesome performance by the seniors!