KC Roos women head to Summit League tournament on the heels of an encouraging effort
Different scale, but Dionnah Jackson-Durrett can show her KC Roos that it’s possible for a team to come off the pace and win a conference tournament championship.
The year was 2004, and Jackson was a junior guard for an Oklahoma team that was seeded sixth in the Big 12 event.
Off they went, knocking off opponents, gaining momentum and stacking victories. The Sooners met top-seeded Texas in the final in Dallas, and the game wasn’t close. Oklahoma won by 19. Jackson was named the tournament’s MVP after averaging 17 points, 8.3 rebounds and 3.5 assists.
“When you’ve experienced a low seed like that year at Oklahoma, I can convey those experiences,” Jackson-Durrett said. “You’ve got to let that momentum take you.”
It starts with a victory and the Roos will seek to end an eight-game losing streak in the opening round of The Summit League Championship in Sioux Falls, S.D.
Kansas City, which enters the event seeded 10th, meets No. 7 Denver on Friday at 3 p.m. It’s time to hit the reset button for a team that stands 7-22 overall.
“It’s like 0-0, right?” Durrett-Jackson said. “You go in and put everything you have into it. It’s a new season for us and it’s exciting.”
KC lugs the losing streak but is coming off one of its best games of the year, a one-point loss to South Dakota, the tournament’s fourth-seeded team. The Roos led by six with three minutes remaining but couldn’t close it out.
They shot a season-best 52.8% and had two players top 20 points: Manna Mensah with 23 and E’Lease Stafford with 20. The Roos lost to the same team by 23 earlier in the year.
“Going into the tournament, you want to play your best basketball, and I felt like against South Dakota, (we) showed up,” Jackson-Durrett said. “And that’s what you have to do in a tournament.”