Stephanie Cherry’s second-half scoring barrage wasn’t enough to keep pace with Northern Arizona.

Despite Cherry’s 17 points over the final 20 minutes, the Hornets fell to the Lumberjacks 67-58 on Thursday after leading 25-24 at the half.

“I wasn’t really thinking about the score at all,” said Cherry, who finished with a game-high 23 points. “I was just trying to keep my team into it with my energy. I was just trying to get things going for us.”

Sac State (8-20) finished the season with seven more victories than last season, when the team was 1-26.

“Coming off of last season, it was kind of rough,” Cherry said. “We didn’t want to repeat that, and we wanted to do a lot of things that people didn’t think we could do this year. We wanted to gain respect from people with our play and with our record.”

The team had its best season since the 1995-96 10-18 campaign. Some of that success can be attributed to second-year head coach Dan Muscatell, whose team’s motto this season was to “change program history.”

“The eight victories that we got and making the Big Sky Tournament, I think that there is a lot to be proud of there,” Muscatell said. “We are trying to build and grow, and clearly making the Big Sky Tournament is a great step for us in the right direction. We would like to make that a given on a yearly basis.”

The loss was the Hornets’ third of the season to the Lumberjacks. In front of 517 fans in Missoula, Mont., Northern Arizona grabbed more rebounds (32-29), had double the number of assists (18-9) and shot a better percentage than Sac State (49.1 to 44.9).

Northern Arizona ended the game with four players in double figures, led by junior Nicky Eason’s 15. Junior Cindy Alldrin scored 15 points for the Hornets and sophomore Kim Sheehy had 10.

The Lumberjacks went on an 8-0 run to open the second half. The Hornets would not get any closer than five points the rest of the game.

“I thought we controlled the pace of the game and did a good job of executing in the first half,” Muscatell said. “In the second half, for some reason we came out flat. We just didn’t have the same kind of energy that we did in the first.”

The Lumberjacks lost to Weber State on Friday in their semifinal game. Weber State then lost to Montana in Saturday’s championship game, 80-64. Montana will represent the conference in the NCAA tournament.

————————————————————————————–Armando Botello II can be reached at [email protected]