Jessica Durr knew what it felt like to see her team come up just short. In her three years at TWU, the Pioneers had done it every time.

Sure, there were various factors and reasons why TWU barely missed clinching a spot in the Lone Star Conference tournament during her first three seasons on the team, but the result still came up the same.

Counting up the years of her college eligibility, Durr knew she and fellow seniors Keshia Bolds and Megan Hashman had only one more chance to fulfill that goal.

So when TWU clinched its spot in the league’s postseason tournament with a week to go in the regular season, forgive Durr if she became more emotional than average about it.

“I think all of us had it in our mind that this was the year,” Durr said. “There was no place to go but to the tournament.”

The Pioneers (15-11) earned the third seed from the LSC North Division and will play Tarleton State (22-5) in the first round of the LSC tournament at noon today in Bartlesville, Okla.

The tournament seeding is the highest in school history for TWU, which is making its first tournament appearance since 2006. At 9-5, the Pioneers finished with their best record in the league in 20 years.

It follows on the heels of back-to-back 7-7 LSC marks in the first two seasons under head coach Beth Jillson. Each season was riddled with injuries and bad breaks, and each wound up with the Pioneers in contention to the end, but ultimately on the outside of the eight-team tournament field after the final day of the season.

“We were a good team the past few years, and a lot of things happened that were out of our control,” Jillson said. “When we clinched [a spot] in the conference tourney, they were so excited.”

Durr said the finish of the last two seasons left plenty of motivation this year for TWU’s returning players.

“We were all on the same page,” she said. “Since we had pretty much the same team coming back, we all knew what our goal was.”

Ultimately, that goal leads to today’s rematch with Tarleton, a team that defeated the Pioneers 71-50 on Jan. 18, in a game that marked one of TWU’s worst offensive performances of the season.

“We know that they are a great team and we respect that, but we know we can play better than we did the previous time,” Jillson said.

Like in the past, TWU’s roster has been decimated with injuries this season, leaving the team with only eight players for much of the last month.

The short bench has required the Pioneers’ senior trio to play larger roles. For example, Durr, who missed a few games during conference play with a high ankle sprain, has responded by averaging more than 14 points per game in her last four games, and has posted double-digit rebounds in two straight contests.

“I just wanted to come back and leave the rest of what I had on the floor,” said Durr, a Plano native who also missed eight games during her junior season because of a shoulder injury.

Hashman, a Crandall native who has taken over for the departed Renee Renz as TWU’s main low-post threat, is second on the team in scoring at 13.3 points per game and has led the Pioneers in scoring in seven games this year.

That’s a far cry from a year ago, when Hashman joined TWU as a walk-on after playing for two seasons at Hill College. She averaged 4.3 points in a reserve role.

“I knew what I was capable of doing and I didn’t really show it,” Hashman said. “I just worked really hard over the summer and it paid off.”

Bolds, a senior who played in high school at Carrollton Christian, has missed just two games in her entire four-year career at TWU. She averages five points per game and is one of the team’s top defenders.

“We’ve got a lot of different people who have stepped up,” Jillson said. “They [the seniors] have been great leaders. They did a great job of taking care of business and setting a good example.”

Jillson hopes the work ethic of her seniors will help instill tradition in a program that achieved consecutive winning seasons for the first time since 1980.

“They have laid the foundation,” Jillson said. “Now the underclassmen have to uphold that tradition.”

TODD JORGENSON can be reached at 940-566-6871. His e-mail address is tjorgenson@dentonrc.com.