LAWRENCE — Holly Kersgieter has played in front of a larger crowd inside Allen Fieldhouse before.

Kersgieter, a super-senior guard, was on the team last season when Kansas women’s basketball played in the 2023 Postseason WNIT. She was on the court for the Jayhawks’ WNIT championship win against Columbia. The crowd that saw that game ended up having an official attendance of 11,701.

But while that’s more than the 9,007 who saw Kersgieter and Kansas win 58-55 against No. 9 Kansas State on Sunday, the atmosphere that group created mattered a great deal to Kersgieter. It added on to what already became a day worth celebrating for the Jayhawks, who topped their in-state rival in front of their largest home crowd — by far — this season. And it’s something she won’t soon forget.

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“Even though, like, the attendance was technically less than the (WNIT), in my head the first thought was, ‘This is the best memory I have in Allen Fieldhouse,’” Kersgieter said. “Whether you’re playing for a championship or whatever it is, having a home rivalry game this packed against a top 10 team at a crucial moment in the season, I thought to myself, ‘This is the best moment I’ve had.’”

According to a post from the Kansas stats and info account on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, that’s the fourth-largest regular season crowd this Jayhawks team has ever had inside Allen Fieldhouse. It’s the largest since Feb. 17, 2002. That is more than two decades ago.

Kersgieter mentioned that neither she nor her teammates expected the building to be that crowded, and that it almost made her emotional. All the trials and tribulations she’s had to endure over the course of her career seemed to dissipate. The roar she heard late in the game, that the crowd delivered as Kansas held on for the Big 12 Conference win, isn’t something she said they get to experience a lot.

Whether that size of crowd will carry over into future games will be determined in time. This season the Jayhawks (16-11, 9-7 in Big 12) only have one more home game, March 2 against No. 25 Oklahoma. But for now Kersgieter and her team have a memory that can potentially propel them to even more success, and one that mattered to coach Brandon Schneider as well.

“Obviously the (WNIT) championship was great last year,” Schneider said. “But this team is fighting for a NCAA tournament berth and I think this is a top 10 win late in the year — is one of those that you add to the resume and hopefully solidifies the opportunity to compete here in a couple of weeks.”

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Jordan Guskey covers University of Kansas Athletics at The Topeka Capital-Journal. He is the National Sports Media Association’s sportswriter of the year for the state of Kansas for 2022. Contact him at jmguskey@gannett.com or on Twitter at @JordanGuskey.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: For Holly Kersgieter, Kansas women's basketball's KSU win was special