Players perspectives across women's basketball

Purdue senior Lindsay Wisdom-Hylton is one of seven women's basketball players who will provide periodic updates on their seasons.

For The Associated Press

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP) -The month of February has been extremely eventful for the Purdue women's basketball team.

In this month alone we had our alumni game at which the 1999 National Championship team was recognized, the WBCA Pink Zone game, a game we won on a last-second shot - not to mention we have won six of our last seven games.

We will have senior night on Thursday, Feb. 26th and I know it will be very emotional. Personally I know I am going to cry along with the four other seniors on the team. The five of us are a very close group, with three of the five of us being fifth-year seniors.

We are in shock that our college careers are almost over. That being said, I am excited to see where everyone ends up after we graduate from Purdue.

The Big Ten season is slowly coming to an end. The conference tournament is just one week away and everyone wants another championship this year. We have won the tournament the past two years and are looking for a three-peat.

I feel as though we are playing our best basketball right now; we have definitely shown improvement this month. We started off by gutting out a close game at Wisconsin on Feb. 8. That's the one we won on a last-second 3-pointer by freshman Brittany Rayburn.

With emotions still high we played Northwestern during our fun-filled alumni weekend. We were fortunate enough to reunite with the 1999 team at a really touching banquet.

The coaches and players from that Purdue team spoke and shared their wonderful stories of that amazing season.

That win over Northwestern and the inspiring weekend was supposed to move us into an important game at Ohio State, but we did not finish that game well and lost at their place. It was the first game back for our point guard FahKara Malone. She had missed nine games with a severely dislocated finger.

Right after our loss at Ohio State, our team made a pact to not lose another game. So far, so good (knock on wood), we have kept our word and have won four in a row, beating Wisconsin at home, Minnesota at their place - which nobody in the Big Ten had done before us - Illinois for our Pink Zone game, and finally at Penn State.

All of those games were exciting, especially our Pink Zone game vs. the Illini. In a single day we were able to raise approximately $10,000 for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in Indianapolis. We wore white uniforms with pink trim and pink shoes.

We donated money so we could keep the shoes, and the jerseys were auctioned along with a couple other items which contributed over $4,000 to the total raised.

After that game we had a free basketball clinic for kids so they could get involved and feel a part of our program. It felt great to touch so many peoples' lives.

I hate talking about myself and I really had forgotten about it until my SID reminded me, but I guess I should mention that in our game at Penn State, I pulled down 12 rebounds and needed just nine to set the Purdue career rebounding record.

I now have the school records for career blocked shots and rebounds, which is nice, but not nearly as important as what we are able to accomplish as a team. We want to make a really strong push come tournament time.

We have two more exciting regular season games left; one is our senior night against Michigan on Feb. 26. Then we play Michigan State, which is currently tied for second in the Big Ten - and that game could ultimately decide our seed in the Big Ten Tourney.

Our team really needs to continue to improve and go into the conference tournament strong and on a mission. We are on the right path right now and we need to keep it that way.