The Cougar women’s basketball team took down their third ranked foe of the year in what’s becoming a specialty for the young team.  

WSU (11-6, 5-0) defeated the No. 21 Colorado Buffaloes (11-5, 1-4) at Beasley Coliseum on Friday night by a final score of 70-60.

“Colorado is obviously a very good team, [21st] ranked in the country, Jen Reese, an amazing player. The key for us was to win the rebounding war,” said head coach June Daugherty. “Our kids really played tough and they took care of the glass tonight so it’s a really exciting win for us and it’s great to get another ranked opponent.”

Colorado led the conference in rebound margin +7.7, but the Cougars were able to out-rebound the Buffaloes 42-36. Shalie Dheensaw led Washington State with seven rebounds.

Leading the charge was junior guard Tia Presley, who finished 7-10 from the field with 17 points, matching sophomore guard Lia Galdeira for the game-high in scoring.

“We’ve found a way to start working together, you see everybody starting to score a bunch everyone’s getting good open shots,” Presley said. “I feel like we are such a hard team to play against when we have such balanced scoring.”

A key player off the bench was sophomore guard Taylor Edmondson. With Galdeira in foul trouble early in the game, Edmondson was able to hit two straight three-pointers to help WSU gain a lead over Colorado.

“Tonight when I got my open shots, we moved the ball really well and my teammates moved the ball to me really well so they make good passes for me to get good shots,” Edmondson said.

Both teams combined to shoot 54 shots from the free throw line. Coming into the game, the Cougars led the conference in free throw percentage with 72 percent.  However, they struggled in this game from the charity strip shooting 58 percent.

This is the first time the women’s basketball team has beaten three ranked opponents in a season since 1994-95, and this ties their best start in conference play (5-0) since 1977-78, according to WSU Athletics.

Washington State ends its two-game home stand on Sunday at 12 p.m. against the Utah Running Utes (7-9, 0-5).