It wasn’t always pretty but the outcome was a thing of beauty for the Cowgirls.

Grinding its way past Incarnate Word on Saturday, McNeese State earned the last of four first-round byes in the Southland Conference women’s basketball tournament, which will be played March 10-13 in Katy, Texas.

The Cowgirls clinched fourth place in the regular-season standings with a 73-65 win over UIW with their season-best fourth consecutive victory.

“Not our best game, but to find a way to win with everything on the line, that says a lot about our team,” said McNeese head coach Lynn Kennedy.

McNeese (13-13, 8-5 SLC) has one regular-season game left before the tournament, next Saturday at first-place Houston Baptist (14-9, 10-2). The Cowgirls, who won six games a season ago, are .500 for the first time since Nov. 28 with a chance for their first winning record in five seasons.

“It matters that we get the bye,” said Cowgirls junior Desirae Hansen. “It is hard to win four games in four days (in the tournament). We still got to finish strong.”

Hansen finished with 15 points as did Le’Shenae Stubblefield to lead the Cowgirls.

Despite leading most of the early going, McNeese found itself down 43-39 after UIW’s Destiny Jenkins’ 3-pointer with 6:09 remaining in the third quarter.

That’s when McNeese took over.

Behind Cristina Gil, the Cowgirls went on a 15-4 run to finish the third quarter up 54-47. That included a 10-0 spurt that saw Gil score six points. She ended the quarter racing coast to coast to beat the buzzer with a layup.

Gil finished with 11 points.

“We let them back in it and we had to get it right back,” Gil said. “That is what we had to do. We had to become more aggressive.”

McNeese was able to hold off any Cardinals (9-15, 5-8) comeback in the fourth.

“That put doubt in their minds,” Kennedy said of Gil’s run. “It also gave us back our confidence.”

McNeese held the conference’s leading scorer, Jaaucklyn Moore, in check most of the game. Going in averaging almost 18 points, Moore had 12, with four of those coming in the final 25 seconds.

She was one of three Cardinals to finish with a dozen points.

“That was our whole game plan, make her get frustrated,” Hansen said of chasing Moore. “We didn’t want to give her any easy shots.”

Moore finished 5 of 18 from the field and 2 of 8 from behind the 3-point line.

McNeese got 12 points and seven rebounds from Divine Tanks while Zuzanna Kulinska was a plus-19 while on the floor.

The score was tied at 14 after one quarter with the Cowgirls grabbing a 36-31 lead at the break. UIW started the second half on a 12-3 run before McNeese took control for good.

“This is a big deal for us,” Kennedy said. “We were not picked to do what we are doing.”

In a preseason poll of league coaches and sports information directors, McNeese was picked to finish sixth in the eight-team league.