Women’s Basketball Clinches a Share of the Conference Title, Its First Since 2014

UW–Porter Falls women’s basketball clinched a share of the Wesconsin Collegiate Athletic Conference regular-season title on Saturday with a 71–58 win over rival Chippewa Valley State in front of 2,140 fans at Ironclad Fieldhouse. It is the program’s first conference title since 2014.

The Ironclads finished the regular season 20–5 overall and 13–3 in conference play, tied with Eau Pleine. Porter holds the tiebreaker on head-to-head results and will be the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament. Its semifinal is Thursday, February 26, at 7 p.m. at the Fieldhouse.

Saturday’s game was close until the third quarter, when Porter went on a 16–2 run built on the defense that has carried the team all season. Chippewa Valley State turned the ball over 21 times. Junior guard Maren Sletten had 14 points and 11 assists. Her eighth assist of the night was her 152nd of the season, breaking the single-season program record of 151 set in 2009.

“I didn’t know about the record until they stopped the game and the whole place stood up. My first thought was that I’d probably thrown a bad pass. Then I saw my mom crying in the second row.”

— Maren Sletten, junior guard and nursing major from Cedar Bluff

The season’s other milestones:

• A nine-game winning streak through January, in which the team never trailed in the second half.
• A conference-best turnover margin of +6.4 per game.
• Five players who are nursing or health sciences majors and schedule practice around clinical rotations, including Sletten, who left the Fieldhouse Saturday night for a 6:45 a.m. shift at the simulation hospital.
• A team GPA of 3.41 for the fall semester, the highest of any Ironclad team.

“Division III is supposed to be about this,” said Athletics Director Chuck Running. “Nobody on that roster has an athletic scholarship. They are here for a degree, and they also happen to be the best team in the league.”

Students get in free to Thursday’s semifinal with a Porter Card. Public tickets are $8. If Porter wins, the final is Saturday at the higher seed. More on the program is on the women’s basketball page and the athletics homepage, and supporters can join the Ironclad Club.

Contact: Office of University Communications, news@uwporterfalls.edu