EVANSVILLE—It's the end of the third quarter in Thursday's opening-round matchup between Austin Peay and Tennessee Tech at the Ohio Valley Conference Women's Basketball Tournament and Keisha Gregory isn't having a good time.

The Govs are trailing 51-43 and Gregory is 3-for-11. This is not how she envisioned closing out her senior campaign, and it's dangerously close to slipping away.

"I thought we needed to pick it up and keep playing our game," she said. "The game wasn't over, and we knew that. We knew we could come back and win."

She plays possessed to start the fourth quarter. First, she grabs the rebound on an Arielle Gonzalez-Varner block and rewards the rim-running big with an assist for an easy lay-up. She comes back on the next possession and attacks the rim, pulling up to become the first Gov in double figures.

On the other end, she stops a lengthy Tennessee Tech possession with a steal. Two possessions later, she's in the lane again, absorbing contact and getting another bucket to fall. Four-point game.

Ahead of the media timeout, the Golden Eagles go on another run and the deficit near double-digits again. Gregory, who hasn't factored into the most recent moments, is gassed. She's played nearly every second of the contest, at the head of the press and banging bodies underneath anytime the Govs switch to zone. A lifetime of basketball, four years at Austin Peay, all condensed down into these next few minutes.

"She's the first player I've gotten to coach for four years as a head coach," said head coach David Midlick. "She didn't ask for me, but she got me for four years. She's pure class."

She gets a rebound. She ties up a Tennessee Tech rebounder and gets change of possession for another stop. The offense is disjointed but she's scrapping on that end too. She gets a steal, but can't convert two chances underneath, taking punishment but not receiving the call.

The Govs can't buy a bucket. They have to resort to fouling if they want to remain in the contest, and Tennessee Tech continually converts at the line. The end of Gregory's career doesn't come via buzzer-beater or any other kind of surprise finish that we live for in March. It comes in an inexorable march, and that march plays out publicly in front of fans, opponents, officials and everyone else.

The game draws to a close. Time runs out on Austin Peay's season and Gregory's career. The notion of fairness in sports is a myth; that Gregory, a kid who has battled so much adversity through her career, has to be the one on the short side of the scoreboard is unfair to the point of criminality, not because of anything she did or her team did on this particular day but because the hero who worked so hard and persevered through so much is a tidy narrative. It's what this month is built on.

As time ticks down, it's clear this won't be the story for Gregory.

The clock hits zeros. The season is finished. Following the postgame session with head coach David Midlick, she emerges, tears in her eyes, for the press conference. In the holding area, Tennessee Tech head coach Kim Rosamond spots Gregory and makes a beeline for her.

"You're such a great player," she says, giving Gregory a hug. "You are so tough to guard."

There's more, but you get the idea. Gregory, an All-OVC pick this year, put it all together for a senior season that ticked nearly every box in terms of success. It's impossible to gauge how Rosamond's plaudits hit Gregory in the moment—your humble narrator has never been All-OVC at anything, or worked toward something for 20 years that is one press conference from reaching its conclusion. One hopes she'll look back on it with the benefit of hindsight that she earned the respect of and was feared by her opponents when she had the ball in her hands.

For seniors, these press conferences can usually go one of two ways—stunned silence or tearful sobbing. Gregory is neither, answering questions and providing genuine insight. Head coach David Midlick cracks a joke about someone in the room helping set her up with a graduate assistantship next season, as Gregory wants to go into coaching.

She'll probably be a pretty good one. Her late mother Karen Kemp was ETSU's head coach for 19 seasons. Keisha has coaching in her blood, but she's got so much more than that which will be missed by Austin Peay next season.

"She's a leader by example," Midlick said. "She's who you want your daughter to be. She's handled adversity for four years. I'm going to try to keep it together up here about what she's meant to me and this program. I'm very proud of her."