Pena gets a 'core memory' and a championship

WBB: The junior guard has made 54 three-pointers for the Racers this season

Briley Pena helps cut down the nets after Murray State’s Missouri Valley Conference championship win Sunday. (Photo: David Eaton)

In Sunday’s Missouri Valley Conference Tournament championship game against Belmont, Murray State’s 16-point halftime lead had been cut down to as little as three in the final minute of the third quarter. After a Trinity White basket pushed the Racer lead back to six, Murray State had the ball one final time to end the quarter. That’s when junior guard Briley Pena found Katelyn Young for a huge basket with 0.6 seconds remaining.

With time winding down and the ball in her hand, a younger version of Pena may have tried to fire up a three-pointer to beat the buzzer. Instead, by passing, Pena was able to make the right play at the right time to help give the Racers a huge lift at the end of the period.

“(It was a) very mature play,” Murray State Head Coach Rechelle Turner said. “When I recruited Briley, she was a point guard in high school. She could shoot the lights out, but she was a point guard. She is a kid that we go to, and she's a kid that we lean on to run the team at times and in different situations. Now, it's not what she wants to do, and it's not what we want her to do because she's such a prolific shooter, but that's just a heady, junior, former point guard play, and it was a big one. It probably was, in my opinion, one of the biggest momentum changes of the entire second half.”

Pena’s perspective of that final play of the quarter showed maybe it’s sometimes better to be lucky than good.

“Honestly, when I got it, I'm not even going to lie, I didn't know how much time was on the clock,” Pena chuckled. “I'm sorry. I didn't. That's on me, but I was too tired, my legs, I was like, ‘I'm not shooting this. There's no way it's going to get up there.’ I was going a thousand miles an hour. We needed a ‘for sure’ bucket. When you need it ‘for sure,’ I'm going to Kate. So I just saw her down there posting. Coach Turner (screaming) ‘Pass her the ball!’ I was already going to do that anyway. So I throw it in there, and she made an And-1, and that's when I got to stomp around the court and do my thing. It was a great play. It was electric, the crowd. You could feel it after that play. We had all the momentum, and it was just amazing.”

The junior guard has been remarkably consistent from three-point range throughout her career. As a freshman, she shot 38.4% from beyond the arc. Last season, she shot 37.6%. This year, she’s back up to 38.3%. The part about her that has been so impressive this season is that as the game’s have gotten bigger, Pena has gotten better. In the last six games, Pena is 13-for-23 (56.5%) from deep, and her head coach couldn’t be less surprised.

“When she shoots the basketball, I'm going to be honest with you, I think it's going in every time,” Turner said. “She's that good of a shooter. I watch her in practice, I watch her do Green Light (shooting), and she makes way more than she misses. I'm actually way more confident than she is, because it surprises me when they don't go in. She never misses bad. It may be a little short, a little long, but she's always on the mark. I think people forget about big shots she's hit throughout the year, or big shots she's hit throughout her career, but she's always Big Shot Briley. That's the way I refer to her because that's the way I see her. Her ability to do what she did this week just took us to another level. When she's shooting like that, we're tough. I know that she'll continue to be someone that makes those shots and plays for us down the stretch.”

How important is Pena’s three-point shooting to this team this year? When she makes at least two in a game, the Racers are 14-2 this season. When she makes three in a game, Murray State is 7-0.

There may have been no bigger triple against Belmont than the one Pena hit with 4:25 remaining that essentially put the game out of reach.

I bet if you watch that again, you’re going to find yourself with a giant smile on your face. It was a moment Pena says she will never forget.

“That was insane,” Pena said, flashing her million-watt smile. “Kate's done that so many times. I've played with her for a while now. If there's all those defenders, she's just going to tap it to somebody. This happened earlier in the season at home. She tapped it to, I think it was Trinity cutting, and it was a big layup, a huge bucket for us. Her tapping it out to me, I was like, ‘Well, I'm open, so I'll shoot it.’ It was just electric. Again, one of those moments where you're just like, ‘Wow, this is happening.’ That was almost like the dagger of the game. I was just blessed to be put in that position to make that shot, and I'm so glad that I did. It was crazy. It's definitely a core memory.”

Pena and the Racers will try to create more memories on Saturday when they face Iowa in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament.