GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Colorado Mesa collected three of the four major awards and placed three players on the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference women's basketball All-Conference team, announced Wednesday morning.
Olivia Reed is the RMAC Player of the Year, receiving the most points in voting by the conference coaches. It follows her 2023 selection as Freshman of the Year, and the 6-foot sophomore forward from Windsor made the All-Conference first team for the second straight year.
Mason Rowland is the RMAC Freshman of the Year after a stellar debut season. The 5-foot-7 guard from Durango played the sixth-man role this year for CMU, coming off the bench in every game. She also made the All-RMAC second team, along with junior point guard Kylie Kravig.
Taylor Wagner, who guided the Mavericks to a share of the conference title and the No. 1 seed in the RMAC Tournament, is the Coach of the Year.
Reed has been the Mavs' catalyst, averaging 16.9 points and 11.2 rebounds a game, with 11 double-doubles. Her .573 shooting percentage leads the conference, and she's shooting .590 for her career. After scoring the majority of her points from the low block as a freshman, she improved her shooting range in the offseason. It resulted in Reed being able to step out and hit mid-range and long-range shots, including 13 3-pointers.
Reed reached double figures in 23 games this season, with 12 games of 20 or more points and four 30-point efforts. She's started every game of her career and scored in double figures in 42 of the 59 games.
She also continued to improve defensively, recording 47 blocked shots, with 31 steals, third on the team, to go with her 337 rebounds. She's tied for third on CMU's single-season rebounding list with Tonya Stites (1991-92).
Teams tried to slow her down by collapsing defenses around her, but Reed countered by finding open shooters for 78 assists, second on the team and 11th in the conference.
Reed set a career high with 30 points twice this season and also broke her own career high in rebounding with 24, only three off the CMU single-game record held by Pam DeCosta (1985).
She was the conference Defensive Player of the Week four times and twice was the Division II Conference Information Directors Association national player of the week.
Rowland showed immediately that she was going to be a force this season, scoring 22 points in her first college game and reaching double figures in four of the first five games as the Mavericks' top reserve. Wagner often said that Rowland could be a starter, but the energy, ability to create her own shot and ball-handling she provided off the bench was invaluable on the young squad.
The 22 points wasn't her season high, however — she scored 30 against CSU Pueblo in January. Rowland averaged 14.8 points and 4.9 rebounds a game, with 55 assists and a team-high 37 steals. She shot .387 from the field, .342 from the 3-point line and was the Mavs' best shooter at the free throw line at a .868 clip (138 of 159), third-best in the RMAC.
Kravig led the conference in assists with 168, which is third in program history in a single season, including a career-high 12 against Colorado School of Mines. The junior point guard from University High School in Greeley averaged 7.5 points and 3.1 rebounds, with 33 steals. She's second in the conference in assist-to-turnover ratio at 2.1 per game.
Wagner took a team picked to finish sixth in the conference to a share of the RMAC title. With only one senior on the roster and only two returning starters in Kravig and Reed, Wagner guided the Mavericks to a 24-5 record during the regular season after going 13-16 last season, the only year the Mavericks were below .500 in his tenure.
It's the sixth Coach of the Year award in Wagner's 12 seasons at Colorado Mesa (2013, 2014, 2015, 2019, 2020).
The Mavericks (24-6) were upset in the quarterfinals of the conference tournament by CSU Pueblo on Tuesday and will now turn their focus to the South Central Regional tournament, hoping for one of six at-large bids. CMU was ranked No. 2 in the region last week, with another poll to be released later today, but it will not include Tuesday's results.
CSU Pueblo's Alisha Little was selected the conference Defensive Player of the Year after leading the conference in scoring (20.4) and rebounding (11.7), with 113 blocked shots and a nation-leading 23 double-doubles. She also made the first team.
