MINNEAPOLIS – The madness continues.

The sixth-seeded ISU women’s basketball team defeated 11-seed Washington 79-60 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday. The game, held at the Williams Arena in Minneapolis, propels the team to the second round for the fifth time in school history, and gave seniors Lyndsey Medders and Megan Ronhovde their first win in the tournament.

The sense of accomplishment was rampant throughout the team.

“This is the best win, the best feeling I’ve ever had,” Medders said. “We’re excited to continue to play.”

ISU coach Bill Fennelly said he is thankful the win provides his team with another chance to take the court this season.

“This is truly a very special day for our team to continue to play in the NCAA Tournament,” Fennelly said.

“We really had a lot of energy, and the fan support was tremendous. I’m just excited to keep playing, to practice tomorrow and come out Monday night and [have them] put on the uniform at least one more time.”

Indeed, the roughly 3,000 Cyclone fans in attendance could have easily been the team’s sixth man. That collective buzz was a large factor in the team’s will to succeed.”These kids want to do really well for their fans,” Fennelly said. “They didn’t want to disappoint the crowd.”

At first, disappointment may have been the only feeling that the crowd, and the team, was experiencing.

Washington, 18-12 overall and 11-7 in the Pac-10, kept Iowa State grasping in the first five minutes with relentless defense and offensive rebounds. Medders, however, sank a three that sparked an 11-0 run to put Iowa State ahead. Despite tying it up at 22, the Huskies never regained the lead.

“It’s the NCAA tournament and you’re concerned about how your kids are handling it, and I didn’t want to call timeout and appear that we were panicking,” Fennelly said. “We were just getting outhustled, and we ended up getting out of that stage fine. In the first media timeout, I wasn’t talking X’s and O’s, it was all about pride in the team.”

The Cyclones used consecutive threes from freshman Alison Lacey and sophomore Nicky Wieben to seal the halftime score at 39-26. The balance of inside and outside was the defining factor of the game, especially the spark from the post players.

Wieben led Iowa State with 18 points, including two threes and 11 points that were sunk in the beginning of the second half. Toccara Ross chipped in 12, while Rachel Pierson collected seven. Fennelly said the switching Washington defense was also a concern at first, but his paint players responded well to the challenge.

“Our post game was very, very good, and when they play that way, we’re tough to guard because our perimeter kids can score with the basketball,” Fennelly said. “All three players didn’t make very many bad decisions, and I thought all three gave us really good quality minutes, a couple hustle points, offensive rebounds – things we hadn’t been getting enough of. If our post play is anywhere near that, game in, game out, then we’re a lot better basketball team.”

Halftime also gave the team a chance to reflect on a d‚j… vu moment – its 2005 NCAA showing in Fresno, Calif. The Cyclones were up at halftime against Utah, but let the win slip through their fingers in the second half. It was enough of a bad memory to keep it from happening again.

“It was eerily similar. In this game we didn’t obviously start out very well, but we finished the half really well, and it was the same when we played out in Fresno,” said Ronhovde. “We made that a concern at halftime, and we were going to play with the same amount of intensity that we played for the last 16 minutes to keep them from getting back in the game.”

With the first-round jitters and superstitions out of its system, Iowa State (26-8) moves to the next round Monday to face No. 3-seed Georgia, a team that ranked No. 13 in the last AP poll. Now that this Cyclone team has joined the ranks of Iowa State players before them who faced the second round, it’s time to see just how far they can dive into the record books.

“This is a tough environment, and there’s the emotion that it could be over any second,” Fennelly said. “Right now, our motto is ‘no excuses, no regrets,’ and I think we’re heading in that direction as a team.”