LARAMIE – Heather Ezell walked into the visiting locker room after Wyoming's lopsided loss at Minnesota and tore the printed box score she was holding into pieces.
 
UW's head coach wanted to make it clear to this new cast that the mission, despite a 3-6 non-conference record, is still to win a Mountain West championship and to make lifelong memories in March.
 
The Cowgirls took a big first step in that direction with an 83-60 victory over San Jose State in the conference opener on Wednesday night at the Arena-Auditorium.
 
"That's a team that understands what the ultimate goal is," Ezell said. "We talked about after Minnesota. I went in the locker room and ripped the stat sheet up and said it doesn't matter now because conference play is here and everybody is 0-0 and this is where we make our run for March starts on Wednesday. Credit them because they came out and really performed."
 
Malene Pedersen scored 18 of her 21 points in the first half and Henna Sandvik scored 19 of her career-high 21 points after the first quarter to lead the way.
 
The Spartans played zone defense, something UW had not spent much time preparing for. Pedersen, the unflappable all-MW senior guard, picked it apart with eight points on 4-for-5 shooting in the first quarter.
 
"Mal has been great her whole college career, she's used to taking a lot of shots, she is a great player," Sandvik said of Pedersen. "For a lot of us other players it has been a little bit of an adjustment of having that scoring mentality."
 
The Cowgirls countered by playing at a faster tempo after rebounds to prevent SJSU from getting its defense set, which helped open the game up over the second and third quarters when they outscored the visitors 54-33.
 
"We really wanted to win. We kind of had this mentality that we were going to make it happen," Sandvik said. "We talked about it together with the team. Now that conference starts, we want to start the right way, so we definitely were ready to get the win."
 
Sandvik spent her first three seasons as a role player at Indiana. Now the talented senior from Helsinki, Finland, is being asked to take pressure off Pedersen in a leading role with the Cowgirls having graduated six seniors from last year's team that lost in triple-overtime in the MW championship game.
 
"This is what she is capable of doing," Ezell said after Sandvik's breakout performance. "We've been kind of waiting for her to have that moment. Hopefully this propels her in the start of conference, maybe that's the switch she needed and hopefully it gets her going the rest of conference play."
 
After missing her first three shots, Sandvik kept firing and finished 8-for-15 from the field, including 4-for-6 on 3-point attempts, with seven rebounds, five assists and one turnover in 33 minutes.
 
"My past three years I haven't had a lot of minutes, not a lot of experience taking a lot of shots," said Sandvik, whose previous career high was 12 points last month against Chadron State. "It's having the mindset that it doesn't matter if I miss or have mistakes I'm going to keep being aggressive. I think that's something I have definitely got better at."
 
Sandvik consistently knocks down open shots in practice. She has also been putting extra work in with the head coach to get up to speed with UW's motion offense.
 
"I've been watching film with her where she's seeing more things, she's asking more questions of like, hey, where can I get this? Where can I get that?" Ezell said. "When you start getting those questions asked you know that she is understanding the offense more and looking for her shot more, which is what I want."
 
The one-two punch of Pedersen and Sandvik – the duo finished a combined 17-for-31 (54.8%) shooting against SJSU – was outstanding to start MW play, but Ezell was equally happy with the balance the Cowgirls had.
 
True freshman Jane Rumpf finished with eight points, including a deep 3 at the end of the second quarter to give UW a 41-32 halftime lead. Starting point guard Payton Muma had six assists and one turnover and backup point guard Lana Beslic finished with eight points and seven rebounds.
 
In the post, Logann Alvar and Heidur Karlsdottir both finished with six points and seven rebounds as the Cowgirls had a 49-34 rebounding advantage.
 
"It's awesome that Henna got 21 (points), trust me," Ezell said. "But we have talked about I just need that six to eight from a couple other people."
 
The Cowgirls have a quick turnaround before playing at Fresno State on Saturday (3 p.m., MW Network).
 
Follow Ryan for more stories on Wyoming athletics on X at @By_RyanThorburn on Facebook at Wyoming Athletics and Instagram at wyoathletics. Also follow him at Pokes Insider at Gowyo.com/pokesinsider.
 
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