Although the Cougar women’s basketball team was missing their force down low in senior center Shalie Dheensaw, they were still able to win the rebound battle and grab a 79-76 victory for Washington State on the road against Oregon.

To make up for Dheensaw’s absence, Head Coach June Daugherty increased the minutes of forwards freshman Louise Brown and junior Mariah Cooks. Brown made her first start and grabbed seven rebounds.

Surprisingly, the leading rebounder for the Cougs (11-6, 2-4 in Pac-12) was 5-11 junior guard Taylor Edmondson, who hauled in 10 boards. The team continued to find success when controlling the glass, edging Oregon (8-9, 1-5) 45-38 in that department.

To complement the rebounding, senior guard Tia Presley and junior guard Lia Galdeira both scored more than 20 points to help keep the Cougars in the fight for the Pac-12 at 2-4 on the conference season. With Presley’s impressive 29 points, she moved into seventh place on Washington State’s all-time scoring list.

WSU assistant coach Ashley Grover was happy with the performance of the team’s star duo.

“It was awesome. We can always count on Tia and Lia to get some buckets,” Grover said in an interview with Cougfan.com.

The team built themselves a nice lead late in the game, but allowed the Ducks to go on a run and tie things up at 65 with a little more than five minutes left. The Cougs then managed to build a six-point advantage, but again the Ducks battled back to within a point. However, two free throws by Galdeira with fewer than ten seconds left secured the win for WSU.

As for Dheensaw, her knee injury will be reevaluated when the Cougars return from their road trip, and the team hopes the senior center will be able to return soon.

“She is what we do,” Grover said. “And we’re praying on Monday when we figure out what’s going on that it’s a good result.”

The Cougars return home, Friday, Jan. 23, to host the Utah Utes. The action begins at 7 p.m. and live audio can be found on wsucougars.com.

Reporting by Steffen Stroup