Wichita Standard

Jets turnaround season ends in Kansas City

Newman Women's Basketball's historic season came to an end Wednesday night, falling to the No. 8 seed Northwest Missouri State 70-54. The Jets couldn't stop a hot start from the Bearcats who had 3 players finish with 10+ points in route to the 14 point victory.

The Jets earned their first ever MIAA Tournament appearance last Saturday after taking down Central Oklahoma and were given the 9 seed in the tournament. It was the first conference tournament that the Women's Basketball program qualified for since the 2018-2019 team went all the way to the Heartland Conference Championship. That years team finished 21-10 and set the standard for future Newman Women's Basketball teams to get to.

This year's team had one of the quickest turnarounds in program history. Last season the Jets had only one Division 2 win, 1 conference win and finished the season 3-25 in Head Coach Drew Johnson's 1st season. The MIAA Coaches Poll expected a similar outcome, putting the Jets to finish in tied for 13th. New faces, returning faces, and with nothing to lose, the Jets put together a historic season.

Newman boosted their win total from 3 wins to 10, and their conference wins from 1 to 7, giving them their most MIAA wins in program history in their 4th season since joining. The Jets went from a last place finish in 2021-2022 and finished the 2023 regular season in 9th place to make Newman history.

"I just wanna start and say how proud I am of this group." - Johnson said postgame.

One of the leading stars of this year's team was Britney Ho. Ho earned Third Team All MIAA, the first to reach the award in Women's Basketball at Newman. Britney reached her 1000th point in her last home game against UCO on Saturday. The Senior finished the game against Northwest Missouri State with 26 points and 12th rebound to earn another double double.

"It was definitely a surreal experience that I'm very grateful for." Britney said of her first appearance in the tournament. "In all four years playing in the MIAA I've never made the tournament so I take it with every bit of grateful heart that I can. I'm very thankful for the opportunity."

Maddie Spagnola was another star during the season. The 5th year transferred in out of Quincy and earned Honorable Mention this season with the Jets. She helped take a struggling Jets team with only 3 wins heading into the season and helped lead them to their first tournament appearance.

"It took a lot of hard work. We went through a lot of adversity but we won every game we needed to. It was a lot of fun and you don't want to see it end, but I'm grateful we set the foundation that Coach Drew wanted." Spagnola said recapping the historic season.

"It's heartbreaking to have it end when you've had such a great experience and such a great year. I'm really proud of both Britney and Maddie and how they played. The hope is this is the foundation and the standard for women's basketball to continue doing this in the future." - Johnson said of his two leaders

The future is bright for a Jets team that will be more hungry than ever to return back to postseason play. They got a sniff of what postseason play is all about and will be determined to get back to Kansas City next season and advance. They'll need too keep investing.

Johnson saw the investment his team made this season to get to this point.

"I find myself mildly emotional. You know it's going to be a battle but I'm so proud of the team. Success is always player driven and I told them in the locker room that we challenged them (Newman) a lot this year. There was a time in the middle of the year where we played 5 of the top 7 teams in a span. I think the biggest takeaway is if you work really really hard for something and you poor everything into it, good things can happen. It's easy in our culture and our world to not invest everything you've got in your heart because you might come up short, but this group invested an incredible amount to try and give it a shot and it worked out for them."

The 2022-2023 Jets looked a lot different on the court than last season.

"We had an entirely new roster." Johnson said. "We asked young athletes to say yes to a program that won one Division 2 game last year and Maddie says yes and Brit says she'll come back and we added a couple new players to our roster and kept familiar faces and now we are a 9 seed in the MIAA tournament."

Newman will end their season 10-18, (7-15) and while it won't be seen right away, the season this team had will have a big impact not just for Newman Basketball but for Newman Athletics as well.

Original source can be found here.